<![CDATA[This study is urgent given the importance of effective marketing strategies amid intense competition among higher education institutions, especially in the post-pandemic era, which increasingly depends on customer involvement to succeed. This journal aims to provide empirical evidence and analyze and explain how the moderating role of customer involvement, or customer engagement, affects purchase intentions and purchase decisions at Sekolah Tinggi Ilmu Ekonomi Ciputra Makassar. This study uses the Slovin formula and proportionate random sampling, with 262 respondents, including current and prospective students at Ciputra School of Business Makassar. This study tests all hypotheses using SEM-PLS (version 4.0). The results indicate that customer engagement strengthens the relationship between purchase intentions and purchase decisions, whereas event marketing and sales promotion do not significantly affect purchase intentions. The results imply that higher educational institutions should focus more on strategies that increase customer engagement to optimize purchase decisions, thereby increasing competitiveness and institutional continuity. This study finds that customer engagement plays a vital role in moderating the influence of purchase intention on purchase decisions. In the long term, customer engagement activities in marketing at UC Makassar are expected to further strengthen the influence of prospective students’ interest, once accepted, in making payments at UC Makassar.]]>
