THE POWER OF TEMPORARY CONTENT: ANALYZING EPHEMERAL MARKETING’S ROLE IN BUILDING ENGAGEMENT AMONG ART FUSION’S FOLLOWERS

Abstract

The rapid evolution of the digital landscape compels businesses to innovate through creative marketing strategies. One of the most compelling trends is ephemeral marketing short-lived content such as Instagram Stories that fosters spontaneous and authentic interaction. This study aims to examine the influence of Ephemeral Marketing Exposure on Customer Engagement among Instagram followers of Art Fusion, a creative industry SME. Using a quantitative explanatory approach, the study involved 186 respondents drawn from a population of 3,548 followers, determined using the Isaac & Michael table with a 7% margin of error. Data were collected through an online Likert-scale questionnaire and analyzed using simple linear regression via SPSS. The findings reveal that Ephemeral Marketing has a positive and significant impact on Customer Engagement (R = 0.864; R² = 0.746; p < 0.001), indicating that 74.6% of engagement variation is explained by ephemeral content exposure. These results highlight that authentic, time-limited content can strengthen emotional bonds, enhance digital connections, and stimulate active participation between customers and brands. This study provides practical insights for creative SMEs to design adaptive, sustainable, and high-engagement content strategies in today’s competitive digital innovation era.