Issues in defining and placing consumer brand engagement (original) (raw)
Related papers
Exploring customer brand engagement: definition and themes
Journal of Strategic Marketing, 2011
Organizations are increasingly seeking customer participation and engagement with their brands. Despite significant practitioner interest, scholarly inquiry into the 'customer brand engagement' (CBE) concept has transpired in the literature only relatively recently, resulting in a limited understanding of the concept to-date. This paper addresses this research gap by providing a literature review in this area, and developing a CBE conceptualization based on an integrative deductive (literature-based)/inductive (data-based) approach. Data were sourced from exploratory, qualitative depth-interviews and a focus group employing a total of 14 informants. Extending previous research, CBE is viewed from relationship marketing (RM) and service-dominant (S-D) logic perspectives, whilst an integrative linkage to social exchange theory (SET) is also drawn. Based on the analysis, CBE is defined as "the level of a customer's cognitive, emotional and behavioral investment in specific brand interactions." Further, three key CBE themes are identified, including 'immersion,' 'passion' and 'activation.' The paper concludes with an overview of key research limitations and implications.
Revisiting the consumer brand engagement concept
Journal of Business Research, 2020
Marketing researchers and practitioners almost unanimously agree that consumer engagement has major economic and social benefits. Many published works have attempted to conceptualize, develop, and validate measures of consumer engagement. One seminal study (Hollebeek, Glynn, & Brodie, 2014) developed a scale for consumer brand engagement (CBE) within the context of social media and has since become one of the most cited and employed measures of engagement. The purpose of the current study is to reinvestigate the validity of the CBE scale. We integrate views from marketing research and practice to introduce a new conceptualization of engagement. Examining the CBE scale through the lens of our new conceptualization, we find that, although reliable and valid as an instrument, it does not truly capture the engagement concept. Finally, we introduce and validate a new instrument that more comprehensively captures the engagement concept.
Understanding what drives consumers to invest time, money, and effort in a brand is key in developing successful marketing strategies. Defined as the tendency to incorporate brands into the consumer's self-concept, brand engagement is one construct used to understand such drive. This paper explores the concept of brand engagement through the lens of Maslow's hierarchy of needs and McClelland's theory of needs. The analysis is organized in four sections. First, it provides a summary of the two fundamental theories, their development and key concepts. Secondly, it identifies key findings in previous brand engagement research involving motivation theories. The third segment outlines the strengths and weaknesses in research about brand engagement as a function of motivation. The paper ends with a brief overview and implications for marketers with directions for future research.
An initial pool of 36 items was developed on the basis of extant branding and self-concept literature streams (e.g., Belk 1988;) and on previously validated scales including self-brand connections (Escalas 2004), object attachment (Ball and Tasaki 1992), and RISC . This item pool was given to nine consumer behavior research experts for review; all experts possessed psychometric expertise (cf. Hardesty and Bearden 2004). Experts were provided with a definition of BESC and were asked to carefully read each item and rate it with regard to how well they believed it represented the construct. Experts rated each item on a nine-point scale, anchored with "Does not tap construct" (1) to "Taps construct" (9). Space was provided for experts to comment further about particular items as they felt appropriate.
The Grounded Theory approach to consumer–brand engagement The practitioner's standpoint
Since currently there is no established, unitary and shared theory on consumerbrand engagement (CBE), this exploratory study is aimed at inductively proposing a preliminary conceptual framework of CBE disclosing the knowledge embedded in marketing practice. Our study is designed according to a Grounded Theory approach and it is focused on how practitioners conceive and pursue CBE through their branding strategies and tactics. Findings reveal that CBE is seen by practitioners as a dynamic and process-based concept evolving in intensity on the basis of the brand capability of increasingly intercepting consumers' desires and expectations using all possible physical and virtual touchpoints between brand and consumers. CBE appears as an overarching marketing concept encapsulating different consumer decision-making dimensions, from brand preference to brand purchase. Furthermore CBE emerges as a multi-dimensional construct that beyond traditional cognitive, emotional and conative dimensions seems to be based on emerging experiential and social dimensions that appear as its central elements.
Consumer Brand Engagement in Social Media: Conceptualization, Scale Development and Validation
Journal of Interactive Marketing, 2014
In the last three decades, an influential research stream has emerged which highlights the dynamics of focal consumer/brand relationships. Specifically, 10 more recently the 'consumer brand engagement' (CBE) concept has been postulated to more comprehensively reflect the nature of consumers' particular 11 interactive brand relationships, relative to traditional concepts, including 'involvement.' However, despite the growing scholarly interest regarding the 12 undertaking of marketing research addressing 'engagement,' studies have been predominantly exploratory in nature, thus generating a lack of empirical 13 research in this area to date. By developing and validating a CBE scale in specific social media settings, we address this identified literature gap. Specifically, 14 we conceptualize CBE as a consumer's positively valenced brand-related cognitive, emotional and behavioral activity during or related to focal consumer/ 15 brand interactions. We derive three CBE dimensions, including cognitive processing, affection, and activation. Within three different social media contexts, 16 we employ exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses to develop a reliable, 10-item CBE scale, which we proceed to validate within a nomological net of 17 conceptual relationships and a rival model. The findings suggest that while consumer brand 'involvement' acts as a CBE antecedent, consumer 'self-brand 18 connection' and 'brand usage intent' represent key CBE consequences, thus providing a platform for further research in this emerging area. We conclude 19 with an overview of key managerial and scholarly implications arising from this research. 20 22 23 42 itly, including in specific social media settings (Bolton and 43 Saxena-Iyer 2009; Malthouse and Hofacker 2010). 44 Within this broader context, the consumer 'engagement' 45 concept, which more explicitly accounts for consumers' interactive 46 brand-related dynamics (Brodie et al. 2011), is gaining traction in 47 the literature (Calder, Malthouse, and Schaedel 2009; van Doorn et 48 al. 2010); thus fitting within the broader theoretical perspectives of 49 consumer culture theory (Arnould and Thompson 2005), the 50 service-dominant logic (Karpen, Bove, and Lukas 2012; Vargo 51 and Lusch 2004, 2008), and relationship marketing (Vivek, Beatty, 52 and Morgan 2012). Brodie et al. (2011) define 'customer 53 engagement' as "a psychological state that occurs by virtue of 54
Brand Engagement: An Analysis on Motivation
hmc.comm.fsu.edu
Understanding what drives consumers to invest time, money, and effort in a brand is key in developing successful marketing strategies. Defined as the tendency to incorporate brands into the consumer's self-concept, brand engagement is one construct used to understand such drive. This paper explores the concept of brand engagement through the lens of Maslow's hierarchy of needs and McClelland's theory of needs. The analysis is organized in four sections. First, it provides a summary of the two fundamental theories, their development and key concepts. Secondly, it identifies key findings in previous brand engagement research involving motivation theories. The third segment outlines the strengths and weaknesses in research about brand engagement as a function of motivation. The paper ends with a brief overview and implications for marketers with directions for future research.