Responsible Influencer Marketing in the Short-Form Creator Economy: Appearance Pressure, Consumer Welfare, and Strategic Implications for Beauty and Lifestyle SMEs
Keywords:
Creator economy; Influencer marketing; SMEs; Appearance pressure; Responsible innovationAbstract
Background: Short-form video has become a low-cost entrepreneurial marketing infrastructure for beauty, fitness, fashion, and lifestyle ventures, but appearance-centred creator content may generate consumer-welfare costs alongside reach and engagement. Objectives: This study examined appearance-pressure responses to short-form beauty and fitness content, assessed the internal coherence of a 12-item MMIS-informed adaptation, tested demographic differences, and derived implications for responsible influencer marketing by creator-led ventures and SMEs. Methods: The researchers administered a cross-sectional Google Forms questionnaire. Of 110 collected responses, 16 in the 15–20 age category were conservatively excluded because the grouped age item could not distinguish minors from adults, leaving an adult-assured sample of 94. Twelve statements were rated from 1 (Completely Disagree) to 5 (Completely Agree). Descriptive statistics, Cronbach’s alpha, KMO and Bartlett tests, principal-component analysis, Welch tests, rank-based sensitivity analysis, and HC3-robust regression were used. Results: The appearance-pressure composite showed very high internal consistency (alpha=.956; M=3.21, SD=1.01). A dominant first component explained 67.5% of variance (KMO=.933). Mirroring fashion and beauty standards received the highest endorsement (66.0%). Women reported higher average pressure than men (3.40 vs 3.01; d=.39), although the Welch test was marginal (p=.060) and the rank test was significant (p=.039). Age and student-status differences were not significant. Conclusion: Short-form creator marketing can create broad appearance-comparison pressure. SMEs should integrate diversity, disclosure, realistic representation, and consumer-welfare metrics into influencer strategy rather than optimizing engagement alone.
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Copyright (c) 2026 Dr. R. Ravi Kumar Kumar, Dr. Archan Mitra, Shreya Sharma, Ishika Gangane, Ealeja Gaikwad
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