Digital Marketing Strategy and Consumer Purchase Intention

Abstract

The emergence of the electronic marketplace has redefined marketing practices. Today, competitiveness is defined by a firm’s experience in being tech savvy. Leveraging digital marketing tools is an antecedent to influencing consumer purchase intentions and is gaining traction in many industries. In the face of these developments, limited evidence exists on the adoption and use of technology in the motor vehicle industry. Global trends point to the existence of volatility in the sales of vehicles, hence the need for examining the probable nexus between digital marketing tools and consumer purchase intention in the motor vehicle industry in Kenya. Specifically, the study sought to establish the effect of social media marketing, website marketing and search engine optimization on consumer purchase intention. Anchoring on the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology, theory of reasoned action and the technology acceptance model, the study demonstrates the application of these theories in influencing consumer purchase intention. Guided by a cross-sectional survey design, the study targeted 197 registered motor dealers in Nairobi City County. Researchers used a simple random sampling to select 131 respondents. A structured research instrument was 139 Digital Marketing Strategy and Consumer Purchase Intention. Awuor, T., Owino, E. & Ntara, C. (2023). Future X Journal 1(2), 139-157. Introduction The transition of buyers from the physical market space to the electronic market space (e- market) requires modern firms to shift from being brick-and-mortar organisations to being either pure-play entities or click-and-mortar organisations. As time passes, new technologies are emerging to supplement or substitute business roles more efficiently and expediently. Marketing is one of the most transformed business functions, with more companies integrating digital technologies into their daily operations, especially following the Covid-19 pandemic (Chouhan & Singh, 2021). Digital technologies have transformed marketing communication and how customers interact with their favourite brands (Fawzeea et al., 2019). The motor vehicle industry is one of the most concentrated industries in the world, with few registered companies fiercely competing in the same market (Khisa & Kariuki, 2022). According to Al- Kanaani et al. (2021), the vehicle production rate far exceeds purchase capacity in developing nations, and motor industry firms must integrate new marketing technologies to remain competitive. deployed in data collection and the survey monkey technique was applied to complement the process. A pilot test of the instrument was done, and its validity and reliability were confirmed. A mean scores analysis shows that automobile firms have embraced the use of digital marketing to a great extent. Exploratory factor analysis decomposed the study variables into a three- factor structure. The factors were regressed against the predicted variable and the first two factors had a positive and significant effect while the third factor had a significant but negative effect on the predicted variable. It was deduced that digital marketing tools significantly affected consumer purchase intention; therefore, players in the auto mobile industry should swiftly embrace and invest in digital marketing technologies to excel in the e- market space.