Track: E-Business and E-Commerce

Abstract

This paper aims to examine whether social media marketing activities plays an important role upon creating purchase decision, and the effects if mediated by brand awareness and willingness to buy. In addition if Income and educational level can amplify the effects towards purchase decision. Causal relationships between hypothesized variables are related to each other so as to form a structural equation model (SEM) with one exogenous variable, three endogenous variables, and two moderating variables. Convenient sampling method was used to obtain 200 samples of ordinal data derived from respondents' assessments of 27 survey items with a scale of five. Respondents from this study were Taeyang Kulture students whose entry was allegedly due to the influence of social media marketing activities. The decision of prospective students to join Taeyang Kulture is strongly influenced by the dimensions of SMMAs which include interactivity, informativeness, personalization, and trendiness. This effect is more effective, especially if the SMMA is more directed at prospective students who are highly educated and have high incomes. This research refines previous research that has not considered environmental aspects in the model, namely income level and education level which strengthen the desire of prospective students to decide to join Taeyang Kulture