Does social media marketing and customer engagement push customers towards purchase in online fashion industry in India? A moderated-mediated analysis

Social media marketing (SSM) is a new-age concept, and studies have proven its impact on the behaviour of consumers. However, rarely has the moderating impact of prior experience been highlighted. The current study is based on a mediation-moderation model in which customer engagement and prior customer experience, respectively, act as mediators and moderators in the relationship between SSM and customer purchase intention in the Indian e-commerce sector. The customers of digital sellers served as the population of the study. Convenience sampling and snowball sampling techniques were combined to collect the data. Primary data was collected through questionnaires. For analysing the structural model, PLS-SEM was used. Our study draws on the 'belief updating theory' and highlights the crucial fact that although there is an impact of SSM in engaging customers and influencing their purchase intention, as validated by the current study, this impact gets moderated by the customers' prior experiences.