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This study aims to perform the bibliometric analysis of the customer engagement (CE) literature, highlights the major research themes and classifies the subdomains. The study also identifies antecedents and consequences, as well as dimension evolution, and suggests future research directions.

This study used a comprehensive bibliometric approach using Scopus data from 2002 to January 2024. Advanced analytical techniques, including bibliometric and cocitation analysis using R and bibexcel, were used. In addition, machine learning (ML)-based Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) was used to extract latent themes.

This study reveals the domain’s past trend and present research scenario. The thematic analysis of CE is classified into three phases. Document cocitation analysis provided four broad clusters: conceptualization and operationalization, value creation through engagement, building relationships with brands and engagement-social media interface. The antecedents and consequences are categorized and presented along with the evolution of the multidimensional nature of CE.

This study adds to the literature in two key ways. First, the entire scholarly production has been compiled into one frame. Second, multiple methods were used to unravel citation, cocitation and textual data. Furthermore, ML-based LDA was used to extract latent themes from clusters and future research directions were proposed.

Customer engagement (CE) as a domain of research started gaining impetus when it became apparent that it can be a key driver of a firm's performance, competitive advantage and loyalty. The purpose of this study is to develop a deep understanding of the CE construct in marketing literature using bibliometric analysis.

In this study, 940 articles were retrieved from Scopus, the well-known electronic database. Bibliographic coupling and co-occurrence analysis using VOSviewer along with content analysis were employed.

After careful content analysis, six clusters were identified through bibliographic coupling: (1) modeling customer engagement, (2) customer engagement theory and empirical validation, (3) customer engagement and service-dominant logic, (4) customer engagement and social media, (5) customer engagement and brand platforms and (6) engagement in other contexts. The outcomes of this study would not only be valuable for scholars working in the CE domain, but could also be useful for practitioners and policymakers who wish to enhance their understanding about CE.

Over the past decade, the research on CE construct has exploded owing to the growing interest of both scholars and practitioners in the field. Despite being a popular field of research, there is no published work on a comprehensive bibliometric analysis of the construct in marketing literature. The current study bridges this gap in the existing literature.

The purpose of this study is to operationalise and measure the effects of negative customer engagement (CE) in conjunction with positive CE. Both valences are explored through affective, cognitive and behaviour dimensions, and, in relation to the antecedent of involvement and outcome of word-of-mouth (WOM). It also explores the moderating influence of service context by examining engagement within a social service versus a social networking site (SNS). Engagement with the dual focal objects of a service brand and a service community are also examined.

Structural equation modelling is used to analyse 625 survey responses.

Involvement is a strong driver of positive CE, and positive CE has a strong effect on WOM. These findings are consistent across the “brand” and “community” object, suggesting positive CE is mutually reinforced by different objects in a relationship. Positive CE is also found to operate consistently across the service types. Involvement is a moderately negative driver of negative CE, and negative CE is a positive driver of WOM. These relationships operate differently across the objects and service types. Involvement has a stronger inverse effect on negative CE for the social service, diverging from assumptions that negative CE is reflective of highly involved customers. Interestingly, negative CE has a stronger effect on WOM in the social service, highlighting the active and vocal nature of customers within this service context.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper to quantitatively measure positive and negative valences of engagement concurrently, and examine the moderating effect of dual objects across contrasting service types.

Relationship marketing scholars and managers have recognized the potential of customer engagement to enhance business performance and customer value. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to examine the effects that different types of customer engagement behaviors have on their perceived benefits.

The authors conducted two empirical studies. In the first step, 69 in-depth interviews were held to identify important customer engagement behaviors and targeted benefits. Then, in the second step, a quantitative study with 255 participants was used to match the identified customer engagement behaviors with the targeted benefits.

The results reveal that there are three aggregated types of customer engagement behaviors (“value creation-focused customer engagement”, “online-focused customer engagement” and “customer-to-customer interaction-focused customer engagement”). These types of customer engagement behaviors lead to different targeted benefits (social, relationship, autonomous, economic, altruistic and self-fulfillment benefits).

A consideration of the influencing factors of the different customer-engagement-behavior types, including customers’ motives for their engagement with a company, would potentially enhance the findings. Furthermore, a closer investigation of the relationship between socio-demographic characteristics and customer engagement types can also provide deeper insights into the reasons for engaging with a certain firm or brand.

The findings provide managers with information on how to segment customers according to their customer engagement type and associated benefits and thereby enable them to manage customer engagement behaviors more profitably.

The results make a key contribution to the emerging research field of customer engagement by gaining deeper insights into the benefits associated with different customer engagement behaviors. It becomes clear that different customer engagement types aim at receiving various benefits.

This paper uses practice theory to strengthen the theoretical relationship between customer engagement (CE) and value cocreation (VCC), thereby demonstrating how customers may become engaged and remain engaged through VCC practices.

The study adopts a problematization approach to identify shared assumptions evident in service-dominant logic (SDL) and CE research. Practice theory, as a higher-order perspective, is used to integrate the iterative and cyclical processes of VCC and CE, specifically through the theoretical mechanism of habitus.

Habitus acts as a customer value lens and provides a bridging concept to demonstrate how VCC and CE are joined via sensemaking processes. These processes determine how customers perceive, assess, and evaluate value, how they become engaged through VCC, and how their experience of engagement may lead to further VCC practice. The temporally bound experiences, states, and episodes are accumulated and aggregated through an enduring customer value lens comprised of habituated dispositions, interests, and attitudes.

This work responds to calls for research to strengthen the theoretical link between VCC and CE and to take account of customers' lived realities and their contextualized experiences. A key suggestion for future research is the use of a rope metaphor to stimulate thinking about the complex, temporally unfolding, and interrelated processes of VCC and CE.

The customer value lens and CE rope are introduced to simplify the complex, abstract, theoretical research on VCC and CE for a nonacademic audience. To understand how customers' value lenses are formed and change, and how a CE rope is strengthened, firms, service designers, and practitioners need to understand sensemaking processes through customer narratives and to use platforms and feedback to support and trigger sensemaking.

This paper provides a theoretical mechanism to explain the iterative and cyclical nature of VCC and CE processes and how accumulation and aggregation occur in these processes. In doing so, it demonstrates that CE occurs by virtue of, and is typified by, sensemaking processes that reproduce and shape a customer's habituated value lens, which perceives, assesses, and determines VCC and thus provides a basis for further customer engagement.

Both customer engagement (CE) and corporate social responsibility (CSR) have been linked to customer loyalty. Past studies use service dominant logic and customer value co-creation to explain this relationship. The purpose of this paper is to apply utility theory to develop and test a new theoretical model based on CSR initiative preference to understand the relationship between CE and customer loyalty to the organisation in a CSR platform.

This empirical study uses choice theory in the form of best-worst scaling, and structural equation modelling, to measure the impact of sports club members’ choice preferences for a range of CSR initiatives on their intention to engage with the initiative and subsequent loyalty to the club.

This study highlights the importance of engaging members in the CSR strategy they prefer as it enhances not only the extra value to the organisation via customer loyalty to the organisation, but also CE with the organisation. Furthermore, the study reveals age and gender impact on the relationship between CE in CSR initiatives and customer loyalty.

This study extends CE to CSR behaviours and provides empirical evidence for a unique theoretical framework of CE based on utility theory. It also highlights the need to take into account moderating variables such as customer demographics.

By the end of this chapter you should be able to demonstrate an understanding of:

Customer engagement (CE) as a multi-dimensional construct comprising of cognitive, affective and behavioural dimensions leading to customer loyalty.

The digital evolutions that have led to the current omni-channel business environment prompting the need to understand the customer journey.

The concept of the ‘CE journey’ and its relationship to the customer purchase decision process and brand communication channels.

This paper aims to focus on customer engagement (CE) in the underexplored context of transactional retailing websites, providing insight into the drivers, manifestations and dimensionality of the construct. The website is viewed as a collection of environmental stimuli, and focus is placed on identifying the website environmental cues that promote CE.

This focussed study follows an exploratory research design. A total of 22 semi-structured interviews were conducted with one segment group: over-55-year-old female online shoppers in the most commonly purchased product category online, clothing. The stimulus–organism–response model forms the theoretical framework.

The unique findings identify that product-related environmental cues drive CE on a website, suggesting that CE occurs at the level of the product, as opposed to the website.

CE with websites exists beyond the customer–brand dyad, with the website forming the third node in a triadic relationship between customer, brand (at level of the product) and website (at level of the product-related cues).

This study reveals the relationship between website environmental cues and the manifestation of CE, providing managers with insight on how best to drive CE. Confirmation is provided that the website represents a vital touchpoint in the engagement journey of a retail customer.

Websites as a focal object for CE are markedly under-researched. This study empirically supports the relevance of considering CE in this context and reveals the influence online environments have on CE.

Employing a service-profit chain (S-PC) framework, this manuscript investigates the relationship between employee engagement (EE) and customer engagement (CE) within service contexts and explores how a mediating mechanism, service employee work performance (SEWP), links EE with CE.

Meta-analytic procedures ascertain the magnitude of the relationship between EE and SEWP (k = 102, ρ^ = 0.45) and between SEWP and three dimensions of CE: customer purchases (k = 42, ρ^ = 0.47), customer knowledge (k = 4, ρ^ = 0.33) and customer influence (k = 7, ρ^ = 0.42). The current meta-analysis reports an effect size for the EE-overall SEWP relationship nearly 1.50 times greater than related extant meta-analyses.

Results suggest SEWP, consisting of service employee task performance and contextual performance, serves as an important intervening mechanism between EE and CE by considering nine dimensions of SEWP. Such findings suggest that to maximize SEWP, service employees must go beyond simply being satisfied in their work roles; instead, service employees must feel energized, find fulfillment and meaning and be engrossed in their work to maximize the service they provide to customers.

This research extends previous meta-analytic efforts, bridges the multi-disciplinary gap between EE and CE research, provides an empirical link allowing for informed decision-making for managers and stakeholders, underscores the importance of service employees surpassing required job responsibilities to meet and exceed customer needs and suggests an agenda for future service research integrating EE and CE.