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Impactof Digital Marketingon Purchase Intention
Impactof Digital Marketingon Purchase Intention
Abstract
Digital marketing is one of the most popular marketing approaches used by companies specifically
through social media and email marketing. On top of their ease of use and robustness, social media
and email marketing have been found to be highly effective in building customer engagement, an
element that determines the prevalence of customers’ purchase intention. Generally, digital marketing
tools enable companies to promote their products with ease as well as build customer relationships at
lower costs, leading to increased sales volume. This study aims to determine the relationship between
social media, email marketing, customer engagement and purchase intention in ICT company named
CoderFirst Sri Lanka. It intends to attain a theoretical confirmation about the relationship between the
variables and determine the suitable implications to maximize the research findings for long-term use.
This study used an online questionnaire as the research instrument that was responded completely by
363 participants made up of the potential customers of CoderFirst. The PLS- SEM method was used to
determine the effect and correlation of each variable, calculated using SmartPLS software. This
research primarily aims to determine the impact of digital marketing specifically social media and
email marketing on customer engagement and purchase intention.
Keywords: Digital Marketing, Social Media, Email Marketing, Customer Engagement, Purchase
Intention
1. Introduction
The advent of the Internet has made online information search easier and provides community
development support worldwide including in Sri Lanka. Based on Internet World Stats in December
2018, there were more than seven million people in Sri Lankan have access to the Internet (World
Internet Stats, 2019) indicating the significant technological development in the country.
In the context of Sri Lanka, IT developments influence the community’s behavior in terms of their
acceptance of new products as they are highly reliant on technology as a source of information and for
communicating with others. Due to this, many companies became aware of the need to improve their
marketing approach to widen their customer reach and one way of doing so is by utilizing information
technology specifically digital marketing. Online consumers that are unreachable via traditional
marketing can be reached directly via digital marketing hence explaining the upward trend of companies
switching from traditional marketing to digital marketing.
The most popular digital marketing tools worldwide are social media and email marketing. The study
by Get Response indicated email marketing as the most top rated digital marketing tool. Email
marketing targets customers who find promotional offers appealing. Consumers who give consent to
receiving email marketing are more likely to have higher purchase intention. Social media also
influences customer engagement (Pütter, 2017) which is an important element for enhancing the
likelihood of purchase intention (Bismo & Putra, 2019). Additionally, email marketing has been proven
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ISSN: 2005-4238 IJAST
Copyright ⓒ 2020 SERSC
International Journal of Advanced Science and Technology
Vol. 29, No. 4, (2020), pp. 1113-1120
to have a significant effect on purchase intention in the case of B2C and B2B companies (Sekaringtias
& Kusumawati, 2017).
Business to Business (B2B) companies in Sri Lanka need to compete with each other to ensure their
survivability in the market. This research hence studies this phenomenon by focusing on a B2B
company, CoderFirst i.e. an ICT company that provides services to improve the digital marketing of
other companies. The issue with CoderFirst is related to the effectiveness and efficiency of its digital
marketing in improving customer engagement and purchase intention. Hence, this study intends to
determine the effect of Digital Marketing (Social Media and Email Marketing) on Customer
Engagement and Purchase Intention at CoderFirst which represents a B2B company.
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ISSN: 2005-4238 IJAST
Copyright ⓒ 2020 SERSC
International Journal of Advanced Science and Technology
Vol. 29, No. 4, (2020), pp. 1113-1120
in an entertaining way will capture more positive attention and Content novelty: New and unique
information will stimulate more customer interest.
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ISSN: 2005-4238 IJAST
Copyright ⓒ 2020 SERSC
International Journal of Advanced Science and Technology
Vol. 29, No. 4, (2020), pp. 1113-1120
3. Methodology
This study employs the quantitative approach along with the associative method to address the research
objective. The cross sectional technique was used to determine the time horizon of this research. This
study relied on primary. The primary data was gathered via a survey questionnaire utilizing a seven-
point Likert scale (1 – strongly disagree to 7 – strongly agree) distributed online. The study population
consisted of the existing customers of CoderFirst who have had interactions on the company’s social
media platform. The study population was chosen using the simple random sampling technique; 400
respondents were selected in which each one represents one potential customer of CoderFirst. After
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ISSN: 2005-4238 IJAST
Copyright ⓒ 2020 SERSC
International Journal of Advanced Science and Technology
Vol. 29, No. 4, (2020), pp. 1113-1120
allowing four months from August 2019 to December 2019, the survey got 381 responses. Responses
were checked for completeness and abnormal answers. Finally, 363 responses were considered to be
valid. The data collected was first tested for validity (AVE) and reliability (Cronbach’s alpha and
composite reliability) and subsequently used for the hypotheses testing to determine the correlation
between the variables. The hypothesis testing was carried out using the PLS-SEM method with
SmartPLS 3.0 as the statistical tool software. The output indicates the results for the R-square and Path
Coefficient (original sample, sample mean, standard deviation, T-statistic and P-value); both data
results were then employed to identify the relationship between the variables. Finally, the results were
discussed and summarized to propose better future managerial implications.
The reliability test results also shown in Table 1 indicate that all the variables namely Customer
Engagement, Email Marketing, Purchase Intention and Social Media are reliable as their Cronbach’s
Alpha and Composite Reliability values were all greater than 0.60.
Next, the structural model was tested to determine the R-square values of which results are presented
in Table 2 below:
Table 2. R2 Results
The result shows that the R2-Square value is 0.431, indicating that the independent variables (social
media and email marketing) can affect the dependent variable (customer engagement) by as much as
43%. This means that social media and email marketing significantly influence customer engagement.
Meanwhile, the R2 value for social media, email marketing and customer engagement indicates that
these independent variables can affect purchase intention i.e. the dependent variable by 49%. Based on
the derived R2 values, it was found that all the independent variables can explain more than 40% of the
dependent variable.
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ISSN: 2005-4238 IJAST
Copyright ⓒ 2020 SERSC
International Journal of Advanced Science and Technology
Vol. 29, No. 4, (2020), pp. 1113-1120
Standard
Path T-
Deviation P-Values
Estimates Statistics
(STDEV)
Customer Engagement -> Purchase Intention 0.263 0.045 5.833 0.000
Email Marketing -> Customer Engagement 0.313 0.057 5.511 0.000
Email Marketing -> Purchase Intention 0.347 0.051 6.786 0.000
Social Media -> Customer Engagement 0.438 0.055 7.998 0.000
Social Media -> Purchase Intention 0.223 0.053 4.181 0.000
The hypotheses testing results are shown on the Table 3 (also graphically shown in Figure 2 and Figure
3). The first hypothesis testing i.e. the effect of social media on customer engagement derived a T-
statistic value of 7.998> 1.96, with a P value of 0.000 i.e. lower than the 5% significance value. Both
values indicate the significant influence between the variables. The coefficient value derived was 0.428
indicating a significantly positive relationship between social media and customer engagement. Hence,
H1 which proposes that Social Media has a direct significant influence on Customer Engagement is
accepted.
The second hypothesis testing i.e. the direct effect of social media on purchase intention derived a T-
statistic value of 4.181> 1.96, with a P value of 0.006 i.e. lower than the 5% significance value. Both
values indicate the significant direct effect of social media on purchase intention. The coefficient value
derived was 0.223 indicating a significantly positive relationship between social media and purchase
intention. Hence, H2 which proposes that Social Media has a direct significant influence on Purchase
Intention is also accepted.
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ISSN: 2005-4238 IJAST
Copyright ⓒ 2020 SERSC
International Journal of Advanced Science and Technology
Vol. 29, No. 4, (2020), pp. 1113-1120
Figure 3: T-Statistics
The third hypothesis testing i.e. the effect of email marketing on customer engagement derived a
coefficient value of 0.313 indicating the significant and positive relationship between both variables.
Hence, H3 which proposes that Email Marketing has a direct significant influence on Customer
Engagement is also accepted.
Similarly, the fourth and fifth hypotheses testing also derived significant and positive values of 0.347
and 0.263 for their path coefficients and 6.786 and 5.833 for their T-values indicating that all the
variables are significantly and positively impacting the dependent variables. Hence, H4 and H5 are also
accepted.
5. Conclusion
The significant role of digital marketing specifically social media and email marketing in improving
customer engagement and purchase intention as described previously has been proven in this study.
Improved customer engagement due to the use of social media and email marketing subsequently
enhances purchase intention among customers.
The effect of each variable’s indicators was also analyzed and it was found that the indicator of “offer”
for email marketing is the most influential on customer engagement. The implication of this result for
companies is that they should provide better offerings when building the contents of their email
marketing such as explicating product values more clearly or increasing customer engagement by
offering better sales promotions. Meanwhile, the indicator of “communication” for social media
revealed that emotional or funny contents can attract more customer engagement.
In conclusion, digital marketing has been proven to have a significant and positive effect on both
customer engagement and purchase intention. Businesses today need to have a high level of adaptability
apart from the ability to create new marketing values so as to ensure their survivability in the market.
The majority of citizens in Indonesia are well-prepared to experience new marketing approaches such
as social media and email marketing which have been proven to be influential in improving customer
engagement and purchase intention.
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ISSN: 2005-4238 IJAST
Copyright ⓒ 2020 SERSC
International Journal of Advanced Science and Technology
Vol. 29, No. 4, (2020), pp. 1113-1120
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