Social Media Marketing and Purchase Intention: Multi-Mediating Engagement, Brand Equity, eWOM, and Trust

Abstract

This research examines the role of social media marketing (SMM) in influencing consumer purchase intention (CPI) based on a multi-mediation framework which includes consumer engagement (CE), brand awareness (BA), brand loyalty (BL), brand equity (BE), electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM), and customer trust (CT). The study uses 19 hypotheses to test the claims, and the hypotheses are based on a sample of 450 respondents who are Pakistan-based. Findings affirm that SMM completely mediates the associations between the six antecedents and CPI. The antecedents to CPI only have indirect paths (via SMM). The model has a high percentage of variance explained in CPI (58.6) and in SMM (62.9), which validates this strong explanatory power. Results provide practical information to marketers in the up-and-coming digital economies.