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This study aims to examine and compare the influence of the disposition to engage in engagement behaviors on physical and virtual engagement platforms, as well as the influence of these engagement behaviors on brand loyalty, value-in-use and word-of-mouth.

Data were collected using a survey distributed to a random sample of 10,000 fans of five teams in the Swedish top-division of elite football. An exploratory factor analysis was performed to derive a distinction between prevalent platforms, scales were validated through a confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling was used to test the research model.

Customer disposition to engage with the sports team had a significant influence on customer engagement behaviors on both physical and virtual engagement platforms. However, engagement behaviors on virtual platforms were found to be more important than engagement behaviors on physical platforms for fostering brand loyalty and value-in-use.

The results highlight the importance of engagement behaviors with a brand on virtual engagement platforms. Thus, brand managers should prioritize their presence on social media to generate the positive outcomes of customer engagement behaviors.

By examining the effects of customer engagement behaviors on both physical and virtual engagement platforms, this study provides new insights to the emerging customer engagement literature.

Customer engagement is of critical interest to both academics and practitioners. Extant literature focusses primarily on customer engagement with a single focal object, usually brands; this study takes another view to consider customer engagement with multiple focal objects (service provider and context). In addition to testing the relationship of the individual dimensions of engagement with the service provider and engagement with the context, this research elaborates on their drivers, with a particular focus on distinct engagement platforms. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

A survey captures customer engagement with a service provider and a context in a higher education setting, with 251 responses collected across first- and third-year marketing courses in an Australian, mid-sized university.

Engagement with the service provider can drive engagement with the context. In turn, engagement with the service provider can be stimulated through the use of engagement platforms that enable customer-to-service provider interactions. The results show limited effects of customer-to-customer engagement platforms on engagement with the context though. The results are consistent across gender and student grade levels; some differences arise between international and domestic students.

This unique study broadens understanding of customer engagement with various focal objects and also details the flow of effects, from engagement with a service provider to engagement with the context. This research builds on conceptual discussions of engagement platforms and empirically examines their ability to facilitate affective, cognitive and behavioural engagement.

The purpose of this paper is to identify and delineate research directions that guide future empirical studies exploring how engagement platforms facilitate value co-creation and actor engagement in the context of the sharing economy.

The authors adopt a midrange theorizing approach with service-dominant logic as the integrating meta-theoretical perspective to develop a theoretical framework about service platforms, engagement platforms, and actor engagement in information communication technology (ICT) mediated environments. The authors then contextualize the framework for the sharing economy.

The authors introduce 20 unique research questions to guide future studies related to service ecosystems, engagement platforms, and actor engagement practices in the context of the sharing economy.

The sharing economy is an emerging phenomenon that is driven by the development and proliferation of engagement platforms. The engagement platform concept therefore provides a novel perspective for exploration of how ICT can be utilized to facilitate value co-creation and engagement amongst interdependent economic actors in a service ecosystem.

The purpose of this paper is to guide future academic research, rather than managerial practice. Future research based on the framework can help guide decision-makers to implement and use engagement platforms more effectively.

This paper offers new insight into the important intersection of ICT and service research, and guides future studies exploring the role of engagement platforms in the context of the sharing economy.

Algorithms are widely used to manage various activities in the gig economy. Online car-hailing platforms, such as Uber and Lyft, are exemplary embodiments of such algorithmic management, where drivers are managed by algorithms for task allocation, work monitoring and performance evaluation. Despite employing substantially, the platforms face the challenge of maintaining and fostering drivers' work engagement. Thus, this study aims to examine how the algorithmic management of online car-hailing platforms affects drivers' work engagement.

Drawing on the transactional theory of stress, the authors examined the effects of algorithmic monitoring and fairness on online car-hailing drivers' work engagement and revealed the mediation effects of challenge-hindrance appraisals. Based on survey data collected from 364 drivers, the authors' hypotheses were examined using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). The authors also applied path comparison analyses to further compare the effects of algorithmic monitoring and fairness on the two types of appraisals.

This study finds that online car-hailing drivers' challenge-hindrance appraisals mediate the relationship between algorithmic management characteristics and work engagement. Algorithmic monitoring positively affects both challenge and hindrance appraisals in online car-hailing drivers. However, algorithmic fairness promotes challenge appraisal and reduces hindrance appraisal. Consequently, challenge and hindrance appraisals lead to higher and lower work engagement, respectively. Further, the additional path comparison analysis showed that the hindering effect of algorithmic monitoring exceeds its challenging effect, and the challenge-promoting effect of algorithmic fairness is greater than the algorithm's hindrance-reducing effect.

This paper reveals the underlying mechanisms concerning how algorithmic monitoring and fairness affect online car-hailing drivers' work engagement and fills the gap in the research on algorithmic management in the context of online car-hailing platforms. The authors' findings also provide practical guidance for online car-hailing platforms on how to improve the platforms' algorithmic management systems.

Recent literature on customer engagement has introduced the concept of “actor engagement,” which serves as the foundation for this study. The study aims to investigate the formation of engagement and engagement's impact on the performance of sharing economy platforms in an international context.

The study analyses unstructured data from 145,434 service providers and 1,703,266 customers on Airbnb across seven countries (USA, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, South Africa, China and Singapore). Machine learning techniques are used to measure actor engagement, and the research model is tested using structural equation modelling (SEM).

The findings suggest that actor engagement, encompassing the reciprocal relationship between customer engagement and service provider engagement, has a significant impact on platform performance. The moderator analysis highlights the role of cultural differences in the relationship between customer engagement and service provider engagement and between actor engagement and platform performance. Specifically, the study reveals that actor engagement exhibits a more pronounced impact on platform performance in Western countries (such as the USA, Australia and the UK), compared to Eastern countries (such as China and Singapore).

The analysis of the conceptual model is based on the utilisation of behavioural data obtained from the Airbnb website. Due to the nature of the available data, proxies are employed as measures for variables such as platform performance.

This research is amongst the first to provide empirical evidence for actor engagement formation and the function's role in platform performance in the sharing economy. The global nature of Airbnb as a platform facilitates the investigation of country-level factors, specifically cultural values, across seven diverse countries and highlight differences from business to customer (B2C) business models.

Novel technologies such as tokenization have the potential to disrupt value co-creation in sport marketing. Tokenization in particular has generated a hype in sport marketing by facilitating engagement behavior. However, it remains unclear to what extent tokenization can serve as an engagement platform to enable new and innovative interactions between sport organizations and its network of actors.

The study investigated a tokenized governance platform of a professional sport club as engagement platform by means of a case study applying a multi-method approach combining document analyses and semi-structured interviews with sport management, sport club fans and blockchain experts.

Governance tokens indeed foster fan engagement by including fans in decision-making processes. The engagement platform is meant to enable two-way communication between fans and professional sport clubs. However, benefits could be overrated, and fans describe concerns about increasing commercialization due to the application of governance tokens. Thus, opportunities must be balanced out to foster engagement of sport club fans.

The findings contribute to extending the phenomenon of tokenization as a financing model and engagement platform in sport marketing. The results show how tokenized governance platforms can be applied in sport marketing and how they contribute to value co-creation in the digital world of sport clubs.

This conceptual study explicates the dynamic, interlinked relationship between two of the most popular theories in marketing today: psychological ownership (PO) and engagement. The study is set in the sharing economy (SE), where platform business success depends on high levels of engagement by users, both individuals and collectives. The study argues individual PO (iPO) acts as the antecedent to engagement within a dyad of brand and user, and collective PO (cPO) as the antecedent to collective engagement by communities of users.

This conceptual study synthesizes PO theory and engagement theory to produce a PO–engagement framework. The authors adopt a dual-level perspective encompassing individual- and group-level phenomena in the SE and employ examples from practice to illustrate their arguments.

PO acts as the antecedent to the positively valenced disposition and engagement activities of actors in the SE. iPO manifests as engagement within a dyad of brand and user. Outcomes include brand love and contributions to brand reputation and service offerings. Collective PO manifests as engagement within a community or collective. Outcomes include community-oriented peer-to-peer (P2P) sharing for the benefit of others.

This study offers a dynamic framework of PO and engagement in the SE, the PO–engagement framework. The authors contribute to PO and engagement literature studies in marketing by illustrating how a platform user's attachment to targets in the SE motivates emergence of PO, and how different types of engagement manifest from different types of PO.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how organizations create focal engagement objects through posts to their social media community members and how the members engage with these posts in ways that potentially co-create value. Of additional interest is the use of platform, tone and language to determine how they potentially influence value co-creation.

The research method is netnography. Two Australian-based cause organizations were selected for the study, and posts were collected from Facebook, Twitter and YouTube platforms used by the communities, as well as likes, clicks, shares and retweets. Data was examined using content and thematic analyses.

Findings for the characteristics of the posts indicate how platforms need to be member-centric and that post tone and language can be used for engaging members effectively. Three consumer engagement objects were thematically derived from the posts: events, donations and fundraising, and social justice that includes shout-outs and thunderclaps. In turn, consumer responses evidenced engagement sub-processes of co-developing, acknowledging, rewarding, sharing, advocating, adding momentum and learning. The likes, clicks, shares and retweets assisted in determining the amount of community interactions with posts in the cause brands’ communities.

This research is limited to the extent it involved two cases. As with any cross-sectional research, the findings are snapshots of interactions on the two sites over the two-week data collection periods. Theoretical implications provide a deeper insights into value co-creation by empirically examining how organizations and their supporters employ and use post resources to co-create value collectively, and how the characteristics of the posts and behavioral interactions potentially facilitates this.

Managerially, this investigation will assist both commercial brand and cause brand organizations to plan and adapt their social media strategies to enhance supporters’ engagement with posts in this digital environment.

The social implications of this study are that it provides an understanding of how cause organizations can harness online communities for value co-creation to generate social good.

The study is both original and adds value to the research community. The findings presented provide an insightful conceptual framework to guide future research into this important area of consumer engagement with resources in social media communities leading to potential co-creation of value.

This study aims to understand the motivations behind using Airbnb as a collaborative housing platform brand, their impact on satisfaction and engagement, and how the latter affects brand electronic Word of Mouth (eWOM) and brand loyalty. It also analyzes the potential moderating effect of the use intensity of collaborative housing platforms for the proposed causal relationships.

An online survey was addressed to active users of Airbnb with a final sample of 405 users. Data were analyzed using a covariance-based structural equation modeling (SEM) to test the causal model and a multigroup SEM to test the moderator effect of the intensity of use.

The results show that convenience affects brand satisfaction and hedonic motivation influences brand engagement, and both affect return intention and eWOM. In contrast, sustainability motivations seem unrelated both with satisfaction and engagement. Furthermore, the mechanism by which people reach loyalty in terms of return intention varies according to their usage intensity. Thus, the engagement–intention way is stronger for more intensive brand users. In contrast, the satisfaction–intention mechanism is significantly stronger for those with more sporadic use.

The management of collaborative housing platforms should promote tools and actions that favor enjoyment and fun since they increase engagement. On the other hand, it should be interesting to communicate the idea of the convenience of the applications, such as availability for a great offer, ease of contracting, or saving time, since this type of motivation directly correlates with customer satisfaction.

The motivational and behavioral heterogeneity demonstrated in this research can make it easier for people to be reached through different communication strategies and arguments both by the collaborative housing platforms and by public agencies with interests in city tourism management.

This study aims to examine how three perceived interactivity attributes of massive open online courses (MOOCs), namely, perceived active control, perceived synchronicity and perceived two-way communication, impact individuals' engagement and continuance intention of MOOCs through the stimulus-organism-response (S-O-R) lens and how that effect differs between male and female users.

Drawing upon S-O-R as an overarching theoretical framework, this study conducted an empirical study in China and collected 294 valid questionnaires from online learners. Structural equation modeling approach was used to examine the proposed research model.

Empirical results suggest that perceived active control, perceived synchronicity and perceived two-way communication are significant stimuli of individuals' continuance intention of MOOCs, and the influences of perceived active control and perceived synchronicity are partially or fully mediated by engagement on the platform. Multi-group analysis results further indicate that perceived synchronicity has a stronger influence on engagement on the platform for males, while perceived active control and perceived two-way communication are more salient in stimulating engagement on the platform for females.

Research findings from the present study can serve as the foundation to guide MOOCs’ administrators to respond to the needs of participants through interactivity designed into the platform and shed light on possible key solutions of high dropout rates in MOOCs.

This study uncovers the mediating mechanism of affective engagement between interactivity and continuance intention in the emerging context of the latest online learning platform MOOCs and reveals the behavioral differences between females and males regarding their affective reactions to the three interactivity attributes.