Social media marketing cues, digital trust, and purchase decisions

This study examines how platform, source, and message-level cues in social media marketing shape digital trust and purchase decisions in an emerging market context. Using a sequential explanatory mixed-methods design, survey data from 220 social media consumers in Bandung Regency, Indonesia were analyzed via PLS-SEM, followed by in-depth interviews and focus group discussions to interpret the underlying mechanisms. The findings show that algorithmic exposure, influencer credibility, and content quality are each positively associated with digital trust, with algorithmic exposure showing the largest path coefficient. Digital trust in turn positively predicts purchase decisions and statistically mediates all three cue-to-purchase relationships. Qualitative findings reveal that algorithmic exposure creates familiarity and perceived relevance, influencer credibility enables trust transfer, and content quality strengthens message diagnosticity. The proposed Trust-Accelerated Digital Purchase Model (TADPM) integrates these findings into a communication-centered framework. This study contributes to social media marketing literature by clarifying how digital trust operates as a central mechanism linking multi-level marketing cues to social commerce purchase decisions in an emerging digital market.