Influence of Digital Literacy on Customer Purchase Intention: The Mediating Role of Social Media Usage and Moderating Impact of User Engagement and e-Word of Mouth

This research investigated the influence of digital literacy on customer purchase intention through the mediating role of social media usage and moderating impact of user engagement as well as e-word of mouth. A quantitative research design was used, and the data was collected from 184 consumers in Pakistan using convenience sampling technique. The study findings demonstrate that digital literacy and social media usage positively influences consumer purchase intention. Further, digital literacy has a positive impact on social media usage which depicts that all three direct relationship hypotheses of study are approved. Social media usage was also studied as a mediating link between digital literacy and purchase intention. Hence, the partial mediation effect suggests that digital literacy lead towards purchase intention through social media usage, hence, it provides a direction to consumer decisionmaking through active social media participation. The study also highlights the moderating role of user engagement, hypothesizing that more engaged consumers will amplify the impact of digital literacy on purchase intentions. The results depict that this hypothesize relationship is approved. The second moderating variable of the study “e-word of mouth (e-wom)” also approved which shows that consumers rely on e-wom, and it might be due to digital literacy. The contribution of this study is that digital literacy is an important aspect for consumer’s purchase intention as digital literate consumers use social media more effectively and their engagement towards social media can increase the consumer purchase intention. Future researchers can gain valuable insight from current study as it covers the novel phenomenon in respect to digital literacy as it is the one of the drivers of consumer behavior with ever changing technological advancements with advent use of online shopping.