Since COVID-19, there has been a stark increase in rates on online shopping, particularly in the beauty and fashion industries. Our study aims to explore the underlying reasons that young women may have been shopping online more, and consuming more in general, even after the pandemic. To do this, we looked at the interaction between mortality salience (i.e., thoughts of one's own death or mortality) and hauls as a form of influencer communication (i.e., a post where influencers show off large quantities of recently purchased goods) to see what effect these variables had on measures such as young women's engagement with the post and their connection to the influencer, both of which have been used in previous literature to predict consumer behavior (Shan et al., 2020; Vrontis et al., 2021). Terror Management Theory is a potential psychological explanation for the use of shopping as a coping mechanism when met with the realization of one's own mortality. In simple terms, this provides us with an explanation as to why purchasing behavior generally increases during times of greater distress. This project focuses on hauls from short-form content, like on Instagram or TikTok, which is becoming increasingly popular across social media platforms. Our study tested this through a 2x3 experimental survey design with 310 participants, containing 2 mortality salience conditions (high mortality salience versus low mortality salience) and 3 influencer communication conditions (haul, non-haul, and control). We found a significant interaction between mortality salience and influencer communication. Specifically, the interaction between mortality salience and hauls drives post engagement and participants' connection to the influencer. Young women were most engaged with the post if they were in the low mortality salience condition and were exposed to a haul, which goes against our original hypothesis. Future studies could continue to explore the interaction between these two variables in other contexts and demographics.
