The Impact of Brand Awareness on Purchase Intention among Consumers Using Social Media

Abstract

Brand awareness is quantitatively shown to positively impact consumers’ purchase intentions. This dissertation assesses variables across complementing marketing and consumer behavior models, specifically Robert Ducoffe’s advertising value model and HOE (Hierarchy-of-Effects) theory. Specifically, this study looks at how brand awareness among social media users impacts consumers’ purchase intention. Social media has been a staple in shoppers’ lives since the mid-1990s; however, academic social media analysis is lacking. Practitioner marketers have been using social media analysis incorporating data from a wide array of online (e.g., social platforms) and since the mid-2000s. In contrast, academic marketing studies get more data more from Facebook users than from other platforms. It is time for academia to expand social media data collection beyond Facebook! Data was collected from 335 study participants via an online questionnaire. Study participants were over 18 years old with a presence on other social media platforms in addition to Facebook (e.g., TikTok, internet forums, Metaverse, etc…). Cleansed data was analyzed using structural equation modeling via the software SmartPLS. Key findings show that brand awareness impacts purchase intention among online consumers. Furthermore, this study alludes to the importance of further study of demotivating variables. Future similar research should continue to merge data across diverse social media sources.