Multidimensional Research Insights

The systematic review assesses the impact of user-generated visuals (UGVs) on brand image and consumer buying behaviour through social commerce websites. It critically synthesises the findings from existing literature published between 2015 and 2025, and the purpose of the study is to assess the impact of UGVs. The analysis following PRISMA shows that specific features of UGVs, such as authenticity, aesthetic quality, and the type of content (tutorials and hauls, in particular), can have a decisive role in forming positive brand perceptions. These are mainly mediated through psychological processes, such as perceived trust, social proof, and arousal. Moreover, platform-specific affordances crucially moderate the impact of UGVs; the shopping tags available on Instagram and the duet feature on TikTok make them more effective. To incorporate these results, this research suggests a coherent Visual User-Generated Content Co-creation Model (VUCCM) that mediates the framework Stimulus- Organism- Response and consumption-value theory. The review provides a synthesised theoretical framework to what remains a disjointed literature, and it provides the real-life implementation tactics that can be followed by marketers to utilise UGVs to enable them to balance authentic engagement and strategic curation to improve their brand building and sales conversion.