Mechanisms Linking Content Marketing Strategy Access to Household Welfare in Kenya: Multilevel Causal Mediation Analysis

Content marketing strategies are increasingly promoted as instruments of household welfare in emerging economies, yet the mechanisms through which access to such strategies might improve welfare outcomes remain theoretically underspecified and empirically untested. The proposed framework distinguishes between direct effects and indirect effects operating through three theoretically grounded mediators: financial literacy, market participation, and entrepreneurial capability. Drawing on the capability approach and information economics, the article specifies a causal model that accounts for the hierarchical structure of Kenyan households within communities and markets, addresses confounding through a directed acyclic graph, and proposes identification strategies using instrumental variables and fixed-effects approaches. The analysis establishes the theoretical conditions under which content marketing access translates into welfare gains, identifies critical boundary conditions including infrastructure constraints and content relevance, and develops testable propositions for empirical research. The framework contributes to marketing strategy scholarship by moving beyond firm-centric outcomes to household-level welfare consequences and provides methodological guidance for causal inference in subsistence marketplaces.