The impact of digital marketing communication on brand awareness and purchase intention: does customer engagement mediate the relationship between brand awareness and purchase intention

The advent of information technologies (ITs) has changed the way companies perform their marketing activities. IT provides companies many opportunities to increase their online presence and communicate with their prospects using different digital marketing tools. This way of communication enables companies to interact with their potential customers and communicate with segments that were unreachable in the past without deploying digital marketing tools. Therefore, this study tried to find out the impact of digital marketing on brand awareness and purchase intention. The study also tries to investigate if customer engagement mediates the relationship between brand awareness and purchase intention. The study collected 275 responses in Kuwait City from a well-structured questionnaire. The data were analysed using multivariate regression from structural equation modelling (SEM). The results showed that digital marketing communication has an impact on brand awareness, and brand awareness impact to purchase intention is mediated through customer engagement. Customer engagement seems to be the most important factor that has an impact on purchase intention. Finally, the results also implied that brand awareness does not necessarily lead to purchase intention, but through customer engagement.