Examining customer engagement and brand intimacy in social media context

Tien Wang and Fu-Yu Lee

Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 2020, vol. 54, issue C

Abstract: Customer engagement (CE) is critical for firms to cultivate and improve customer brand experience in the customer journey. However, few studies are available on the effects of customer-based driving forces on CE in a defined brand experience context. Given the multidimensional nature of CE, the interrelationships among CE dimensions and various dimensional effects on the customer–brand relationship, represented by brand intimacy, have not been thoroughly explored. To address these research gaps, this study explores three customer- and context-based forces that drive CE in social media contexts from a consumer’s perspective. CE is operationalized as a second-order construct consisting of three dimensions (i.e., consumption, contribution, and creation) to reflect its multifaceted nature. An online survey was used to collect data. The results suggest that customer-based forces, advice seeking, and self-image expression exert positive influences on behavioral CE dimensions. The effect of a context-based factor, that is, fashion involvement, is salient only when gender difference is integrated. Moreover, the three facets of behavioral CE affect brand intimacy to different extents. Brand intimacy is the most affected by creation followed by consumption. The research findings contribute to the literature on CE and brand intimacy and also offer practical insights on marketing communications and segmentation.

Keywords: Customer engagement; Social media; Brand intimacy; Advice seeking; Self-image expression; Fashion involvement (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (28)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0969698918311445
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:joreco:v:54:y:2020:i:c:s0969698918311445

DOI: 10.1016/j.jretconser.2020.102035

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services is currently edited by Harry Timmermans

More articles in Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().