Youth Adoption of Innovative Digital Marketing and Cross-Cultural Disparities

This paper aims to explore Youth’s attitudes towards digital marketing utility perception and its effect on behavioral patterns in a cross-cultural perspective. The unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT 2) model was adopted together with three new variables from the reasoned action theory and the 5S Internet marketing model to propose a theoretical model on Youth’s digital marketing adoption. A survey was conducted in Italy (N = 165) and Lebanon (N = 150), and PLS analysis was implemented for the empirical testing of the proposed research model. In the Italian sample, Hedonic motivation, social influence, facilitating conditions, and efficiency significantly predicted the behavioral intention of digital marketing which, in turn, was significantly related to use behavior. Subsequently, in the Lebanese sample, the subjective norms of hedonic motivation, social influence, experience and habit predicted behavioral intention, which was positively related with use behavior. The results led to the conclusion that national cultures still play an important role in affecting digital marketing adoption among younger generations, especially in less industrialized and technologically developed countries. Therefore, companies should keep this aspect in mind when innovating and developing digital marketing strategies targeting this generation.