The transpiring journey of customer engagement research in marketing: A systematic review of the past decade

Abstract

Purpose

To understand how customer engagement has been researched in the last decade, the purpose of this paper is to provide a systematic review of customer engagement research in the existing literature, derive a comprehensive definition of customer engagement and summarize few important and basic issues that future research should address.

Design/methodology/approach

An extensive literature review was carried out on customer engagement spread over 38 journals identified from online academic databases of Scopus, Emerald, EBSCOS and Science Direct. A total of 66 conceptual and empirical articles on customer engagement research spanning from 2005 to 2015 were analyzed based on different classification schemes.

Findings

Customer engagement is becoming a key concept in marketing. Customer engagement is a multi-dimensional concept comprising of cognitive, emotional, behavioral and social dimensions. The theoretical foundations of this concept predominantly lie with relationship marketing and service-dominant logic. Research on customer engagement has gained a significant pace in the last six years (2010-2015) but most of the articles on customer engagement have come from developed countries.

Research limitations/implications

By providing the distribution schema of customer engagement articles based on different criteria and by highlighting the future research avenues, this study is believed to serve as a valuable tool for researchers to understand the current scenario of customer engagement research in the marketing discipline and take this research area forward. This study acknowledges limitations with respect to its exclusive search criteria, which might affect its generalizability.

Practical implications

This study exhibits the favorable outcomes organizations can derive by building and managing an engaged customer base. The more an organization knows about how to engage its customers, the better adept it will be to enact so. Therefore, understanding customer engagement is imperative in that regard; this review will help organizations comprehend that better.

Originality/value

This is the first systematic review of customer engagement that provides a detailed understanding of the current state of customer engagement research on a single platform and also draws a comprehensive customer engagement conceptualization.

Citation

Islam, J.U. and Rahman, Z. (2016), "The transpiring journey of customer engagement research in marketing: A systematic review of the past decade", Management Decision, Vol. 54 No. 8, pp. 2008-2034. https://doi.org/10.1108/MD-01-2016-0028