The Impact of Digital Content Marketing on the Purchase Intention of Connected Consumers: A Study Based on Natural Ingredient- Based Personal Care Products

Marketers of Personal Care Products are increasingly trying to cater the changing demands of the modern consumer who has information at their dispense, which is just a click away. The technology savvy connected consumers are constantly been updated through the extensive pool of information accessed by them on a daily basis. The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of Digital Content Marketing on the Purchase Intention of connected consumers towards natural ingredient based personal care products. Furthermore, Perceived Trust is positioned as a mediator within the context of this study to enhance the understanding of whether Perceived Trust contributes to mediate the relationship between Digital Content Marketing and Purchase Intention. Moreover, the researcher also attempts to understand the age group differences for the relationship highlighted above. Data were collected from 469 respondents via a structured questionnaire and such data were analyzed through quantitative means using SPSS with the conclusion that the direct relationship between content marketing and purchase intention has been accepted while the impact of content marketing on purchase intention mediated by trust was also accepted. Moreover, it was found that age acts as a moderator within the mediated relationship of trust between content marketing and purchase intention while also acting as a moderator within the simple linear relationship between content marketing and purchase intention.


INTRODUCTION
Alongside the widespread concern and need for personal grooming, the search for natural remedies and natural ingredient-based products for personal care has also grown due to the health-conscious nature of most consumers. This is specifically true for products such as Facewash, Shampoo, Facial and Body Creams that majority of Sri Lankan consumers use on a daily basis.
A fact that's very evident in the Sri Lankan context is that, unlike many of the European, American and certain Asian countries, there is no official and approved symbol or sign that is visible and distinguishable to consumers pertaining to natural ingredient-based personal care products in Sri Lanka.
Ideally there should be a unique element in the packaging or communication materials of these products that will assist consumers to buy the right product they're looking for while also acting as a symbol of assurance. For example, in the United States of America, organic products are endorsed or certified by USDA (United States Department of Agriculture), which serves as a tool of assurance on the contents or ingredients of the products available. Hence marketers of personal care products in Sri Lanka, need to be able to drive the consumer trust by developing reliable, trustworthy and genuine communication contents and practices. While these communications can be done in both conventional and digital platforms, the study under consideration mainly focusses on key digital marketing tactics that the marketers of personal care products utilize.
Moreover, according to The Nielsen Company (US), LLC., 2018 Digital tools are becoming personal advisors. While brands and retailers have granted consumers a seemingly endless range of range, digital tools, devices and platforms have empowered shoppers to find the precise products for them. And in the short period of time that digital has become omnipresent for many of us, our relationships with technology is already changing how we use it. While we might have previously asked a friend or retail associate for help in making this choice, we're now entrusting our devices to meet our needs. This provides brands and retailers new points at which to engage. Due to this omni-channel preference of customers, Consumers are becoming increasingly connected. Due to this behaviour of consumers, the concept of "Connected Consumer" has been a centre of attention in many recent articles as well as company marketing efforts. Accordingly, this study attempts to investigate on how the elements digital based marketing efforts or communication will contribute to the connected consumer's purchase intention towards natural ingredient-based Personal Care products.

Research Problem
The main reason behind conducting this research is the difficulty or the problem that the consumers face when shopping for natural ingredient-based personal care products, when attempting to select the products that are genuinely natural-ingredient based. There's limited to no initiatives that will properly support the consumers to make an informed purchase decision backed by assurance that the product they are buying is formally assured to contain natural ingredients. When the consumer is surfing the internet to buy personal care products they require and are most appropriate for them, they should be able to distinguish natural products among hundreds and thousands of brands that have a digital footprint. According to Accenture Consulting, 2017 trust is rapidly gaining importance to digital brands, where trust is increasingly based on a composite of needs that underpin how we understand and manage the exchange of our information across many different experiences. Organizations are not doing enough to demonstrate or enhance trust around digital products and services -even amidst heightened consumer awareness of today's internet-based fraudulent communications. The risk they run is undermining consumer trust and brand loyalty toward their business -which may prove to be very costly for future competitiveness and growth (KPMG, 2019).
Problem Statement: Within this context, this study focusses on unveiling, the impact that, digital content marketing have on the connected consumer's purchase intention towards natural ingredient-based personal care products in Sri Lanka and how is the purchase intention being affected.
With the view of addressing the research problem elaborated previously, the researcher has identified the following objectives for this study.

Main Objective:
To examine the impact of digital content marketing on the purchase intention of "Connected Consumers" towards natural ingredient-based personal care products.

Sub Objectives
1. To identify the impact of Digital Content Marketing creating consumer trust, on the customer's purchase intention towards natural ingredient-based personal care products.

2.
To determine whether age acts as a moderator within this described relationship studying the impact of Digital Content Marketing creating consumer trust, on the customer's purchase intention.
Accordingly, this research answers the following research questions addressing the main objective and the sub objectives.

Does Digital Content
Marketing have an impact on the customer's purchase intention towards natural ingredient-based personal care products? 2. Does Digital Content Marketing creating consumer trust, have an impact on the customer's purchase intention towards natural ingredient-based personal care products.
3. Does age act as a moderator within this described relationship studying the impact of key Digital Marketing tactics creating consumer trust, on the customer's purchase intention. also goes into defining trust as the belief that allows consumers to willingly become vulnerable to Web retailers after having taken the retailers' characteristics into consideration. In his study Pavlou, 2003 has identified strong assurance systems as a solution to the problem of trust in internet environments.
He has also mentioned that the use of the concept "trust anchor" or an authoritative body that provides assurances about data authenticity as a suggestion for addressing the reliability of routing information on the Internet. It is increasingly becoming the responsibility of brands to overcome the stigma of the web and build trust within the digital playing arena (Capozzi, 2019).

Age as a moderator
Chen, Lee, Tu, & Chao, 2012 has studied undergraduates as participants of the research and recommends that future studies within the study area should encompass or investigate on different age groups since these age groups may have other opinions. Lee, Goh, & Noor, 2019 has focused only on the responses of University students within the age range of 18-25 and suggests that forthcoming research can delve into a wider age group so that the effect of age groups on the purchase intention of skincare products can be evaluated.

CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK
As reflected in the following model, Content Marketing is the independent variable, and purchase intention of consumers towards natural ingredient-based personal care products is the dependent variable. According to the framework, the study attempts to understand the impact of Content Marketing on the Purchase Intention, whereby this relationship is influenced by the mediating variable of Perceived Trust. Moreover, the researcher also studies how the mediated relationship is impacted by age as a moderator. Gavrilas, 2017 has identified Content Marketing to lead within the top three digital marketing tactics of Content Marketing, Search Marketing, and Social Media Marketing. This ranking is also backed by Khorev, 2019. Importance of the problem lies in the fact that these tactics are identified as most difficult to implement while also being the most effective. Hence triggering the question whether such tactics implemented with so much effort put in actually results in consumer trust towards the brand and its content and thereby leading to a purchase intention.

Hypotheses
According to the conceptual model developed above, the following hypotheses are proposed and are expected to be tested in the course of the research based on the study objectives and research questions.

METHODOLOGY
This is a quantitative research for which data is obtained through existing literature which comprises the secondary data, as well as through primary data in the form of a survey through a structured questionnaire.
This study follows a deductive approach. A deductive approach has a well-established role for existing theory: it informs the development of hypotheses, the choice of variables and the resultant measures.
The deductive approach starts with theory expressed in the form of hypotheses, which are then tested. .
This study encompasses an explanatory research design as the emphasis is on studying a situation or a problem in order to explain the relationships between variables (Saunders, Lewis, & Thornhill, 2009).
The research at hand adapts a Mono Method, as the researcher intends to combine a single quantitative data collection technique: a self-administered questionnaire, with quantitative data analysis procedures.

Sampling
The Target Population of this research study can be defined as "Connected Consumers" who use or expect/ prefer to use natural ingredient-based personal care products. From this population the sample for this study was selected from Colombo and Gampaha districts since (Computer Literacy Statistics -2018 (First six months), 2018) has stated that these two districts within the Western Province has the highest computer literacy rates. A judgmental sampling (also known as selective, purposive sampling) is adopted as the research involves a qualifying question which is whether the respondent uses at least one digital or smart device.

Data Collection
The data were collected by means of a structured questionnaire and the survey was conducted among 469 connected consumers within the ages of 15-60.

Data Analysis
The collected data are analysed by employing quantitative analyses such as regression, process model for mediation, multi group analysis through employing IBM SPSS Statistics 23.0 to reach meaningful conclusions.

DATA ANALYSIS AND INTERPRETATION
The collected data was analysed using IBM SPSS Statistics 23.0. The researcher uncovers the nature of the demographic characteristics of the sample, then goes on to study the validity and reliability measures to prove the accuracy and consistency of the data collected. Finally, the researcher conducts a comprehensive analysis and accordingly interprets the results of the analysis in order to achieve the main and sub objectives of the study.
With the view of deriving an understanding of the demographic makeup of the respondents, 56.1% and 43.9% of the sample of the research is represented by Females and Males respectively. Out of all the respondents who took part in the survey, the 15 Higher percentage of the respondents were within the income bracket of more than Rs. 55,001.

Descriptive Statistics
Referring to the Kurtosis and Skewness value of all the variables, the researcher concludes that the data recorded for all variables are approximately normally distributed as per the values provided by Kline, 2011. When looking at the mean value of the distribution of responses for the variables, Content Marketing has the highest mean of 3.9062 and Perceived Trust has the least mean of 3.1314. Concluding from the values of these means, it is possible to state that the consideration of content marketing of the respondents is high and the perceived trust towards brands that respondents come across digitally is "moderate". The standard error of mean is least for Perceived Trust and the highest for Purchase Intention. It is appropriate to report that since Perceived Trust has the lowest standard error of mean; it has a better accuracy in the reflection of the population compared to the other variables. It is evident from the table below that Purchase Intention has the highest standard deviation and hence its variance is higher than the other variables. Accordingly, it is possible to infer that the data distribution of Purchase Intention is more spread out or has a more dispersed data set compared to the other variables.
On the other hand, Perceived Trust has the lowest standard deviation and hence its variance is lower than the other variables. Accordingly, it is possible to infer that the data distribution of Perceived Trust is less spread out or has a less dispersed data set compared to the other variables.

Preliminary Assessments
It is important in any academic study to carry out a preliminary analysis to assess the reliability, validity, and normality in order to get a foundational level understanding of the instrument used for data collection and the nature of the data collected.   Kline, 2011 states that skewness index has to be less than 3 (Sk < 3) and Kurtosis has to be less than 10 (Kur < 10) for data to be normally distributed. Accordingly, with reference to Kline, 2011, these skewness and kurtosis values indicate that the data recorded for each of the variables are approximately normally distributed.

Hypothesis Testing
The researcher uses simple linear regression to assess the direct relationship between the independent and dependent variables while using the mediator analysis for the purpose of understanding the impact of perceived trust within the relationship of content marketing and purchase intention.  As reflected in the table above, adjusted R square value is 0.062. This value can be interpreted as, how much of the change or total variation in the dependent variable can be explained by the independent variable. Accordingly, if we convert this value into a percentage, 6.2% of the total variation in purchase intention can be explained by content marketing. To put this value into perspective, the remaining 93.8%, that's not explained by content marketing, is explained by other factors which are not included in this model.  The slope (β1) indicates that if Content Marketing is increased by 1 unit, Purchase Intention will be increased by 0.253 units. As proven from the positive slope (positive coefficient) of the equation above and significance level, it can be stated that this relationship is a significant positive one and hence the H1 hypothesis of the study can be accepted.

Mediator Analysis
The researcher has adapted the Process Model V3.0 by Andrew F. Hayes to carry out the mediator analysis. The analysis has been carried out through IBM SPSS Statistics 23.0. The researcher has utilized "Single Mediator Model", to study the mediating impact of perceived trust on the relationship between Content Marketing and Purchase Intention.     The above table depicts that the indirect effect of 0.0874 is significant as both the limits of the confidence interval have the same sign (both the lower and upper bound of the confidence interval have positive figures). Since the coefficient is a positive value, it could also be pointed out that the relationship is positive. Accordingly, it is possible to conclude that the mediation effect of perceived trust between the relationship of content marketing and purchase intention is significant.
Therefore, it can be pointed out that, the relationship reflected within the model supports the H2 hypothesis of the researcher, which states impact of Digital content marketing on the purchase intention of consumers towards natural ingredient-based personal care products is affected by Perceived Trust.  Based on the above analysis it can be concluded that both H1 and H2 hypotheses can be accepted.

Multi Group Analysis for testing Moderation (Testing H1a and H2a Hypotheses)
Here the researcher splits the data set into two, based on the two age groups. Once the data set has been split into two based on the two age categories, the researcher has run the process of hypothesis testing conducted for the main/overall group (which comprises of the entire data set of 469 responses), for each of these two groups separately. The direct relationship was measured by simple regression and the mediating impact was measured through the process model similar to what was reported in the proceeding section for the overall data set in this write-up. Accordingly, the results generated from the analysis conducted for hypothesis testing (simple linear regression and process model) for each of the two groups separately have been comprehensively covered in the appendix while a summary of the analysis is depicted below.    As per these three summary tables reflecting the multi group analysis results for mediation, it can be observed that the hypothesized relationship of CM-PT-PI is rejected in the 15-34 age category data set and accepted in the 35-60 age category data set. The CM-PT-PI relationship becomes significant only in the 35-60 age category data set. Hence, it can be concluded that since the impact of content marketing on the purchase intention mediated by perceived trust changes from one age group to another, there's a mediated moderation impact through age. Hence the Hypothesis H2(a) can be accepted.

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION
The main purpose behind the conduct of this research is to understand the impact or the effect of digital content marketing on purchase intention. While previous researches pertaining to this area was conducted in a more general sense, the researcher within this study has identified the key digital marketing tactic that has been highlighted as most effective within both commercial and academic researches as well as specialized by many of the digital marketing firms in Sri Lanka. Thereby, an analysis was conducted to understand whether digital content marketing contribute in the creation of perceived trust that ultimately leads to a purchase intent, while also looking at the direct impact of digital content marketing on purchase intention. Furthermore, the researcher also assessed age as a moderator within each of these two main relationships. The study provides insightful findings as to how digital marketers of natural personal care products can use the digital content marketing and create more targeted digital communications to move the impacting audiences in order to create effective, trustworthy messages and communications. The study is an original contribution to the context of Natural Ingredient-based Personal Care Products.

Accordingly, Digital Content
Furthermore, the moderating effects of age on the variable Content Marketing is unique to this study.
Finally, previous studies have examined the impacts digital marketing on purchase intention in a more general sense while the researcher studied the impact of digital content marketing on purchase intention with specific reference to age and perceived trust within the context of this research, hence facilitating a more effective view on how digital content marketing serves as an impactful variable on purchase intention. These findings will serve as an initial step or a means for the digital marketers of natural ingredient-based personal care products, to move away from being stranded in the entanglement of the lack of consumer trust on their digital content marketing efforts.

APPENDIX
Simple Linear Regression Analysis (15 to 34 age category)   The slope (β1) indicates that each time when content marketing is increased by 1-unit, Purchase Intention will be increased by 0.273 units. As proven from the positive slope (positive coefficient) of the equation above and the significant levels, it is evident that there's a significant positive relationship among the variables, and hence the hypothesis H1 for the age group 15 -34 is accepted.
Mediator Analysis (15 to 34 age category)    The above table depicts that the indirect effect of 0.0519 is not significant as both the limits of the confidence interval do not have the same sign (lower bound of the confidence interval has a negative figure while the upper bound of the confidence interval has a positive figure). Since the coefficient is a positive value, it could also be pointed out that the relationship is positive. Accordingly, it is possible to conclude that the mediation effect of perceived trust between the relationship of content marketing and purchase intention is not significant.   The slope (β1) indicates that each time when content marketing is increased by 1-unit, Purchase

Simple Linear Regression Analysis (35 to 60 age category)
Intention will be increased by 0.177 units. As proven from the positive slope (positive coefficient) of the equation above and the significant levels, it is evident that there's an insignificant positive relationship among the variables, and hence the hypothesis H1 for the age group 35 -60 is rejected.
Mediator Analysis (35 to 60 age category)