Digital versus Traditional Marketing: Comparative Analysis of Consumer Purchase Behavior in the Mobile Handset Market

The rapid transformation of marketing communication has fundamentally changed how consumers search for information, evaluate alternatives, develop trust, and make purchase decisions. This transformation is particularly important in the mobile handset market, where consumers increasingly encounter products through social media, influencer content, search engines, online advertising, mobile communications, and electronic word-of-mouth while continuing to interact with traditional channels such as television, print, radio, outdoor advertising, retail-store promotion, and interpersonal word-of-mouth. Despite extensive research on individual marketing channels, comparatively less attention has been devoted to directly comparing the relative effectiveness of digital and traditional marketing within an integrated consumer decision-making framework. This study develops and empirically illustrates a comparative model of digital and traditional marketing effectiveness in influencing mobile handset purchase behavior. The conceptual framework integrates Stimulus-Organism-Response (S-O-R) theory with selected mechanisms from the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB). Digital Marketing Effectiveness (DME) and Traditional Marketing Effectiveness (TME) are conceptualized as higher-order marketing stimuli, while consumer trust and perceived value represent organismic states, purchase intention represents the proximal response, and purchase behavior represents the behavioral outcome. Digital literacy and age are examined as moderators. A quantitative cross-sectional survey design is proposed, with the Indian mobile handset market used as the research setting. For methodological demonstration, a dataset of 600 observations was generated and analyzed using descriptive statistics, reliability analysis, exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, correlation analysis, structural equation modeling, mediation analysis, and moderation analysis. The results indicate that DME has a substantially stronger total effect on purchase intention than TME. DME also demonstrates stronger relationships with consumer trust and perceived value. Both trust and perceived value significantly mediate the relationships between marketing effectiveness and purchase intention. Purchase intention strongly predicts purchase behavior. Digital literacy strengthens the effect of digital marketing, whereas age weakens the effect of digital marketing but strengthens the relative contribution of traditional marketing. The paper contributes an integrated framework for comparing digital and traditional marketing effectiveness while recognizing that the two communication systems may operate through different psychological mechanisms. Managerially, the findings suggest that mobile handset firms should prioritize digital information-rich channels while retaining selected traditional touchpoints for credibility, physical validation, and consumer segments less digitally engaged.