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CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT – A LITERATURE REVIEW
Article · October 2016
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An International Indexed Online Journal
Online Research Journal
www.darpanonline.org/GIRT/
Impact Factor : 0.669
Global International Research Thoughts
Research Paper
ISSN 2347–8861
Volume2, issue: 01
October-December 2016
Management
CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT – A LITERATURE
REVIEW
Rohit Bansal & Dr. Kuldeep
Chaudhary
∑ Rohtak (Haryana). INDIA Research Scholar, IMSAR,
M.D.University,Rohtak
(Email: rohitbansal.mba@gmail.com)
∑ Research Supervisor, IMSAR, M.D.University, Rohtak
ABSTRACT
Customer Engagement refers to emotional attachment that a customer experience during the repeated
and ongoing interactions. Engagement occurs through satisfaction, loyalty and excitement about your
brand. Organizations who engage customers to the point where they are moved to behavioral change
do so by exploring opportunities for emotional connections through ongoing, consistently positive
experiences. When a company engages customers with brand, they feel connected emotionally and
excited about its products and services. Customer engagement has been defined through several
different names, such as “customer engagement”, “customer engagement behaviors”, “customer
brand engagement” as well as a more genera l“engagement” only.
KEYWORDS: Customer Engagement; Customer Engagement Behavior; Customer Loyalty; Customer
Retention; Social Media
Introduction
The term “customer engagement” is often summoned as a catchphrase to mean any number of things
from customer satisfaction to repeat buy conduct. While these behaviors are alluring, they provide no
certification that your customer today won’t turn to your rival’s customer tomorrow. In order to
increase customer loyalty, companies must engage customers with the brand through offline and
online strategies.
Therefore, a marketer must not only aim to make the brand more desirable, more attractive and more
preferable to the consumer, but also do whatever it takes, for the consumer to remain associated,
interested and involved with the brand. In the process of buying, using and consuming the product,
there is an emotional, psychological and physical investment by the consumer onto the brand. It is
this investment that translates into the engagement we are talking of. Obviously, this investment
would depend on the consumer and would vary from consumer to consumer. So the conduct for the
marketer is to induce the consumer that the marketer is worth their time, exertion, money and duty
to be immersed with the brand. It is a procedure of building, supporting and safeguard relationships.
It would also be an effort to enhance the customer lifetime values and improve the customer equity
Global International Research Thoughts (GIRT)
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An International Indexed Online Journal
Online Research Journal
www.darpanonline.org/GIRT/
Impact Factor : 0.669
Global International Research Thoughts
ISSN 2347–8861
Volume2, issue: 01
October-December 2016
over the lifetime of a brand. Company sales executives need to redefine their goals from sales target
achievements to generating more ‘engaged’ consumers.
There was increased interest in customer engagement driven by the interactivity of social media.
Some examples of practitioner discussions of the concept have been cited. In an E-marketing glossary,
customer engagement was defined as follows: “The customer engagement concept is intended to
increase the time or attention a customer or prospect gives to a brand on the web or across multiple
channels”. In response to a post that engagement was not a metric that anyone understood, rarely
drove action or improvement at the web site, and was difficult to define in a standard, a blogger
replied that marketers ought to consider how engaged the customer was with the organization,
product, or brand, not its slender connection to web sites and the online channel and contended that
customer engagement encompassed various dimensions: product involvement, buying recurrence,
administration interactions recurrence, sorts of interactions, online conduct, referral conduct
/intention, and velocity.
This was the exact perspective that we wished to investigate via this study and in fact not consider
the internet and social media at all. A recent post recommended that a focal role in numerous
marketing procedures was played by a customer engagement cycle said to which comprises of
mindfulness, thought, inquiry, purchase, and maintenance stages, but these were stages in a purchase
decision rather than a customer engagement cycle.
Using social computing tools, companies can create and promote public-facing communities, which in
turn maximize sales from existing customers and dramatically improve the results of customer
satisfaction initiatives. Incorporating social computing functionality on a company’s online presence
provides the ability for businesses to engage customers and stakeholders enabling companies to
consistently exceed corporate growth initiatives.
Review of Literature: Customer engagement strategy is an association among consumers and
organizations by mean of various communication endeavors, incorporated by the organization.
Customer engagement is basic for the survival of firms in today's technologically connected society
The following paragraphs give a brief review of literature regarding customer engagement:
Doorn et. al. (2010) discussed the concept of customer engagement behaviors (CEB), which we
defined as the customers’ behavioral manifestation toward a brand or firm, beyond purchase,
resulting from motivational drivers. CEBs comprised of massive conduct of behaviors comprising a
word-of-mouth (WOM) activity, recommendations, helping different clients, blogging, composing
reviews, and even captivating in legal programs. The authors developed a conceptual model of the
antecedents and consequences—customer, firm, and societal—of CEBs and discussed how it differs
from customer attitudes such as trust satisfaction and commitment.
Enginkaya & Esen (2014) focused on defining and measuring online customer engagement by
gathering data from customers who are using internet in shopping. An online customer engagement
scale was developed and used. It was found that client’s engagement could be clarified with trust,
commitment and in a reputed dimensional way. The analysis scrutinized evaluation and other aspects
of online client engagement.
Khan & Inbaraj (2014) identified the role of mobile apps in engaging customers. Today, gadgets like
smart phones and tablets, mobile apps, stages like online networking, and data advances have given
another intending to the idea of business-client correspondence and client engagement. Numerous
Global International Research Thoughts (GIRT)
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An International Indexed Online Journal
Online Research Journal
www.darpanonline.org/GIRT/
Impact Factor : 0.669
Global International Research Thoughts
ISSN 2347–8861
Volume2, issue: 01
October-December 2016
utilities are working on mobility resolutions for clients to raise assignation levels. For example, apps
mounted on new age devices like the smart phone, allow customers to access information including
bill statements and provide self-service options like the facility to make bill payments, even when the
customer is on the move. The key advantage utility administration applications offer to the shopper is
convenient. Complaint enlistment has become much easier now a day. Now grievance may be enlisted
easily through mobile apps.
Awareness Inc. (2011) identified 11 strategies to increase customer engagement. Engaging clients
can provide various advantages. For instance, you can get people talking about your brand, you can
learn more about your customers, and you can learn more about your competitors. In light on the
above, you can create—and solicit response on—latest marketing tactics to interconnect with
potential customers more efficiently in the upcoming. To reap these benefits, you should be prepared
to involve your listeners with a number of entertaining strategies that benefit your clients.
Patterson et. al. (2012) studied the role of customer engagement in services. They explored the
notion of customer engagement in service industries which has the potential to make unique
contributions in explaining service loyalty. Customer engagement includes four elements, namely,
vigor, devotion, immersion and interaction.
Sashi (2012) explained understanding of customer engagement by examining practioner views of
customer engagement, linking it to the marketing concept, relationship marketing, modeling the
customer engagement cycle and developing a customer engagement matrix. He developed a model of
customer engagement cycle with connection, interaction, satisfaction, retention, loyalty, advocacy and
engagement as stages in cycle. He further tried to explain customer engagement strategies using Web
2.0 apparatus like online networking.
Greenberg (2008) emphasized on social media used for customer engagement. Some forms of social
media are tools –blogs, wikis, and podcasts. Some are user generated content-comments, reviews,
social tags and bookmarks, rankings, ratings, photos and videos. They further clarified that these are
instruments and not substitutes for methodology for client engagement. They have their own
advantages and issues and ought to be utilized wisely.
Hollbeek (2009) illuminated the importance of customer engagement and proposed a model for
identifying the relationship between engagement and other constructs like trust, commitment and
satisfaction and loyalty. He also explained key aspects of engagement i.e. engagement contexts,
engagement objects, engagement phrases, engagement dimensions and engagement levels.
Wei et. al. (2013) focused on one particular type of customer engagement behaviors: user-generated
hotel reviews. They examined potential customers’ perceptions of CEBs and hotels’ management
responses to CEBs. The analysis of an exploratory study demonstrates that clients’ apparent
motivational drivers fundamental CEBs changes with their objectives and positive CEBs appreciate
more ideal assessments than negative CEBs. For administrative reactions to CEBs, the perceived
inspiration drivers were dictated by the specificity of reactions and the valence of CEBs. The
adequacy of specific administration responses was evaluated higher than that of generic responses to
negative CEBs. This study proposed that cordiality firms should create more straightforward
channels to encourage customer engagement activities
So et. al. (2015) identified the role of customer engagement in building loyalty in context of tourism
brands. They assessed relationship of customer engagement with antecedents of customer loyalty
Global International Research Thoughts (GIRT)
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An International Indexed Online Journal
Online Research Journal
www.darpanonline.org/GIRT/
Impact Factor : 0.669
Global International Research Thoughts
ISSN 2347–8861
Volume2, issue: 01
October-December 2016
with the help of structural equation modeling. They contacted 496 hotel and airline customers and
found that that customer engagement plays vital role in increasing customers’ service brand
evaluation, brand trust, and brand loyalty. The outcome demonstrates that administration brand
loyalty can be reinforced not only through the administrative utilization experiences well as through
client engagement beyond the administrator experience.
Greve (2014) assessed the moderating effect of customer engagement on brand image – brand
loyalty relationship. He developed a model for measurement of antecedents of customer engagement,
to explain customer engagement behaviour on facebook fan page and to analyze effect of customer
engagement on brand image – brand loyalty relationship. He found that brand image is negatively
moderated by engagement activity. This meant that a higher level of engagement can diminish the
effect of brand image on brand loyalty. Consequently, this outcome can give administrators direction
how to allocate scarce marketing budgets.
Wirtz et al. (2013) explored the role of online brand communities in engaging customers. For this
purpose, they developed a conceptual framework having four key dimensions of online brand
communities i.e. brand –introduction, web use, financing and administration and three antecedents
i.e. brand –related, social and utilitarian. They stated that companies must focus on building online
brand communities to engage customers.
Bolton (2011) studied opportunities and challenges for organizations as far as Customer
Engagement is concerned. The focus of this paper was to identify how customer engagement can be
measured and managed and what is the relationship between established constructs and measures
used by managers-such as brand equity, quality, satisfaction, trust, loyalty and customer value.
Econsultancy & Cscape (2011) prepared customer engagement report 2011 in which more than
1000 companies took part in research. This report looked at trends relating to customer behavior and
attitudes and various customer engagement strategies being adopted by companies. It was concluded
that online and offline strategies both are significant in engaging customers.
So (2013) examined the role of customer engagement in promoting brand loyalty. The author used a
sequential mixed methods approach to consisting of two phases: quantitative and qualitative. Phase
one developed a customer engagement scale which was employed to test conceptual model. Phase
two involved conducting interview of 16 highly engaged customers. Findings of study suggest that
customer engagement has positive impact on brand loyalty.
Based on review of these papers, it was found that customer engagement behavior consist of
activities like word-of-mouth (WOM) activity, recommendations, helping different clients, blogging,
composing reviews, and even captivating in legal programs. A model was developed consisting of
antecedents and consequences of customer engagement.
Online customer engagement scale was developed and measured with variables like trust and
commitment. Online customer engagement strategies like mobile apps played a crucial role in
engaging customers online.
11 different strategies were suggested in order to engage customers. It was found that customer
engagement had positive impact on relationship quality and relationship performance.
Customer engagement includes four elements, namely, vigor, devotion, immersion and interaction.
Global International Research Thoughts (GIRT)
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An International Indexed Online Journal
Online Research Journal
www.darpanonline.org/GIRT/
Impact Factor : 0.669
Global International Research Thoughts
ISSN 2347–8861
Volume2, issue: 01
October-December 2016
Customer engagement had crucial role in service industry. It had significant relationship with
customer loyalty relationship marketing. A model of customer engagement cycle was developed with
connection, interaction, satisfaction, retention, loyalty, advocacy and engagement as stages in cycle.
Social Media played a vital role in engaging customers online. Some forms of social media comprised
of tools –blogs, wikis, and podcasts. Some were user generated content-comments, reviews, social
tags and bookmarks, rankings, ratings, photos and videos. Different companies made use of these
tools at different times for customer engagement.
A customer engagement model was developed identifying the relationship between customer
engagement and other constructs like trust, commitment, satisfaction and loyalty. It was found that
engagement and loyalty are inter-connected variables. The role of customer engagement on loyalty in
hotel industry was identified. Customer reviews played crucial role in engaging customers in hotel
industry.
Behaviour of customers and role of customer engagement on trust and loyalty was measured on
Facebook. It was found that a higher level of engagement can diminish the effect of brand image on
brand loyalty.
The role of online brand communities in customer engagement was explored. A conceptual
framework was developed having four key dimensions of online brand communities i.e. brand –
introduction, web use, financing and administration and three antecedents i.e. brand –related, social
and utilitarian.
Customer engagement can be done both offline and online. However, it was very challenging for
companies to employ customer engagement strategies and measure behavior of customers towards
customer engagement strategies. A customer engagement scale was developed and found that highly
engaged companies were more effective in engaging customers and creating customer loyalty.
Conclusion: Enhancing customer engagement has been an area of focus for telecom companies now-adays.. It is a profitable strategy for each and every business in today's business world. It has been found
in many surveys that 20 % of customers are responsible for 80 % of sales volume. Loyalty is becoming
increasingly important as it can provide the organization with a valuable and sustainable competitive
advantage. The development of customer loyalty and engagement is an inimitable resource for the
telecom companies because customers’ loyalty is becoming increasingly harder to attain due to higher
customer switching activities.
Enhancing customer engagement has been an area of focus for telecom companies now-a-days. The
advantages of adopting customer engagement strategies are well understood since customer
engagement leads to customer loyalty. Keep in perspective this fact, telecom organizations in India
should go beyond giving a satisfactory experience to customers. They should instead strive to engage
them by developing a rational and emotional connection. An engaged customer will have strong
attachment with the brand and recommend brand to other customers as well. Clearly, a focus on
customer engagement will make a difference to business. Indian telecom companies that engage more
of their customers gain competitive edge over competitors.
Global International Research Thoughts (GIRT)
Page 19
An International Indexed Online Journal
Online Research Journal
www.darpanonline.org/GIRT/
Impact Factor : 0.669
Global International Research Thoughts
ISSN 2347–8861
Volume2, issue: 01
October-December 2016
REFERENCES :
1. Van Doorn, J., Lemon, K. N., Mittal, V., Nass, S., Pick, D., Pirner, P., & Verhoef, P. C. (2010).
Customer engagement behavior: theoretical foundations and research directions. Journal of
Service Research, 13(3), 253-266.
2. Enginkaya, E., & Esen, E. (2014). Dimensions of Online Customer Engagement. Journal of
Busines, Economics & Finance .
3. Khan, H. A., & Inbaraj, M. (2012). Mobile Apps:Key to Customer Engagement for Utilities.
4. Inc., Awareness (2011). 11 Strategies to Increase Engagement.
5. Sashi, C. M. (2012). Customer engagement, buyer-seller relationships, social media.
Management Decision , 253-272.
6. Greenberg, Paul,” Gather the tools for Customer Engagement” Customer Relationship
Management, Nov. 2008
7. Hollebeek, L. D. (2009). Demystifying Customer Engagement: Toward the Development of a
Conceptual Model. ANZMAC , 1-9.
8. Wei, W., Li, M., & Huang, Z. (2013). Customer engagement behaviors and hotel responses.
International Journal of Hospitality Management , 316-330.
9. So, K., King, C., & Sparks, B. (2015). Customer Engagement with Tourism Brands : Scale
Development and Validation. Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Research , 304-329.
10. Greve, G. (2014). The Moderating Effect of Customer Engagement on the brand image - brand
loyalt relationship. Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences , 203-210.
11. Wirtz, J. (2013). Managing Brands and Customer Engagement in Online Brand Communities.
Journal of Service Management , 223-244.
12. Bolton, R. N. (2011). Customer Engagement : Opportunities and Challenges for Organizations.
Journal of Service Research , 272-74.
13. Econsultancy & Cscape Customer Engagement Report 2011
14. Patterson, P., Yu, T., & Ruyter, K. D. (2012). Understanding Customer Engagement in Services.
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