Recent studies recommend that further research on customer engagement needs to

clarify the engagement construct and identify the antecedents and consequences
as well as interrelationships among other constructs (Doorn, et al., 2010; Hollebeek,
2010). The comprehensive empirical testing and validation of customer
engagement has not been done yet. Moreover, existing research has paid very
limited attention to how important role customer engagement may play in the
service-dominant logic context; which is a big gap in the marketing literature.

To conceptualize and develop a scale to measure the concept of customer

engagement.
2. To examine the antecedents and consequences of customer engagement
3. To examine the moderating effects of opportunity and ability on the
relationship between customer motivation and customer engagement.
4. To examine the mediating effect of co-created value on the relationships
between customer engagement, satisfaction, and loyalty.

H1: Customer motivation has a positive effect on customer engagement.

H2: Social identity has a positive effect on customer engagement.
H3: Self-efficacy has a positive effect on customer engagement.
H4: Consumers level of felt social identity moderates the relationship between perceptions of
their motivations and engagement. Specifically, the relationship is
stronger for high social identity consumers.
H5: Consumers level of felt self-efficacy moderates the relationship between perceptions of their
motivations and engagement. Specifically, the relationship is stronger for high self-efficacy
consumers.
H6: Customer engagement has a positive effect on co-created value.

H7: Co-created value has a positive effect on satisfaction.

H8: Co-created value has a positive effect on consumer loyalty.
H9: Beyond the effect of co-created value on customer satisfaction, customer engagement has a
positive effect on customer satisfaction

H10: Beyond the effect of co-created value on customer loyalty, customer engagement has a
positive effect on customer loyalty.
H11: Customer satisfaction has a positive effect on consumer loyalty.

The present research defines that customer engagement is the level of an

individual customers physical, emotional and cognitive presence in their
relationship with a service organization. It consists of vigor, dedication, absorption
and interaction components (Patterson, Yu, & Ruyter, 2006). Vigor refers to the
customers level of energy and mental resilience while interacting with the service
employees, the organization, the brand or with other customers. It also refers to the
willingness to invest time and effort in his/her role. Hence the customers are likely
to be persistence as stay loyal and play his/her role even in the face of difficulties.
Dedication refers to the customers sense of belonging as a customer. The customer
is proud of the firm they patronize and is enthusiastic and passionate to play their
role. He/she is often inspired by the service employees, the firm, the brand or the
other customers. Absorption characterizes the customer as being fully
concentrated, happy, and deeply engrossed while playing his role. They feel time
passes quickly while interacting with the service employees, the firm, the brand or
the other customers. Customers might also find it difficulty of detaching themselves
from the brand or firm. Interaction refers to the various interactions and
connections. It can be the interactions between the customer and the front line
service employees, between the customer and the organization, between the
customer and the brand, and among the customers themselves (Patterson, et al.,
2006).

Conclusion
This chapter addresses the nature, scope and framework of consumer
engagement
developed from a thorough qualitative study. Defined as the intensity of the
consumers
participation and connection with the organizations offerings, and/ or
organized activities,
consumer engagement has five dimensions--awareness, enthusiasm,
interaction, activity, and
extraordinary experience. The construct represents the active and
reflective aspects of
consumers participation and is behavioral, as opposed to being
cognitive, affective or

motivational. Experience, and not exchange, is central to engaging the

consumer. The experience of engagement might not necessarily be enduring
though. The duration of engagement could be
short or long, one-time or repeated, depending on several individual and
social factors.
The construct has a very broad applicability, with the foci of engagement
including
offerings and activities initiated either by the providers or by the consumers.
Consumer
engagement is a relational construct and so it is influenced by the
organizations as well as
individual consumers. Its framework thus incorporates the critical elements
of the engagement
strategy, and the individual pre-conditions that can influence the level of the
consumer
engagement.
Analysis of interviews and other qualitative data suggest that the role of
businesses in
engagement initiatives should be facilitative, the initiatives should
incorporate dialog and reflect
authenticity in organizations efforts. The research also revealed some
individual pre-conditions
for the consumer to be engaged. The consumer should be experienceseeking, should perceive
the program to be meaningful, and free of interactional risks (psychologically
safe) for her to be
highly engaged.
The qualitative work also suggests that consumers derive intrinsic, as well
as extrinsic
value from being engaged with the initiatives of an organization. The more
intrinsically engaged
consumers are, the higher will be the level of engagement. The relationship
between consumer
engagement, value and the above mentioned marketing outcomes
(connection, goodwill, intent
and affective commitment) will be measured in the last stage of this research
and is discussed
extensively in the next chapter.
Chapter 4 discusses the methods that used to develop and validate the
measure of
consumer engagement. The measure underwent purification and validation
in several stages.
Each stage has been discussed extensively in the subsequent chapters.
Chapter 4 will also
address several behavioral outcomes of engagement and value. The
antecedents of consumer

engagement discussed in chapter 3 were identified from the analysis of

qualitative interviews.
Empirical measurement and analysis of these antecedents is beyond the
scope of this study

Dedication refers to the customers sense of belonging as a customer. The customer

is proud of the firm they patronize and is enthusiastic and passionate to play their
role. He/she is often inspired by the service employees, the firm, the brand or the
other customers. Absorption characterizes the customer as being fully
concentrated, happy, and deeply engrossed while playing his role. They feel time
passes quickly while interacting with the service employees, the firm, the brand or
the other customers. Customers might also find it difficulty of detaching themselves
from the brand or firm. Interaction refers to the various interactions and
connections. It can be the interactions between the customer and the front line
service employees, between the customer and the organization, between the
customer and the brand, and among the customers themselves (Patterson, et al.,
2006)

Pre-study for CE purification and validation, we collected data from banking

services customers in order to conduct exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and
confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) on that data. The EFA of pre-study started
with 23 items. After eliminating 9 items (e.g. 6 items from EFA and 3 items
from CFA) due to low loadings or cross-loadings, the items under each factor
made it clear that four dimensions of CE were independent. However, the
present study after eliminating 3 items from the remaining 14 items, it is surprising that
interaction did not come up as an independent factor, but combined with
dedication. Therefore, we labeled as dedication and interaction as a single
dimension of CE. Although interaction is an important component of
engagement; interaction might happen in many different forms depending
on the focus of engagement (Patterson, et al., 2006). For example, the engaged
banking consumer might not only interacts with banks, employees or other customers, but is also
conscious of this interaction (versus just being drawn into it), thinks about the sense of belonging
as a customer in the bank and makes contrasts and comparisons between situations or
connections. Therefore, the interaction is more dedicative and conscious for the engaged
consumer in banking services. Thus, interaction may not always be relevant to CE
but can sometimes be highly relevant.
From the above discussion it is clear that the presence of all the elements earlier
conceptualized as dimensions of CE was confirmed empirically. However, all of these elements
were not strong enough to emerge as separate dimensions. Vigor was a first dimension, second
importation dimension was Absorption, while Dedication and Interaction emerged together as a

single dimension (Dedication and Interaction) as a third important dimension of the Consumer
Engagement scale, developed in this research.
A measurement model of the data obtained from banking services segment refined the Consumer
Engagement scale. The final scale resulting from the measurement models of this data sets has 11
items. Four items make up the vigor dimension, four represent the dedication and interaction
dimension, and another three items represent the absorption dimension. The reliabilities of the
dimensions in the data sets fall between 0.75 and 0.92. The standardized factor loadings are all in
the range of 0.70 and 0.85 with t-values between 12.44 and 15.75. The implementation of
established scale development procedures produced a reliable and valid eleven-item measure of
Consumer Engagement. In this measure, Consumer Engagement is a three-dimensional second
order factor.

The second research question addressed the customers' motivations to

participate in virtual NPD projects. As little research exists that examines
customers' motivation to engage in VCI in a business-to-business context,
this study built on findings from motivational studies of other related
areas (virtual consumer integration, open source software, consumer
articulation on opinion platforms, and user innovation). It was found that
three motives (product improvement, help, and interest in innovation)
explain 56% of the variance of the user's willingness to participate in VCI;
compensation had no significant impact.
Concerning the question of how to attract users to the participation in
VCI, the results suggest that it is primarily arguments that envisage the
interest in medical technical innovation and personal knowledge gain
which will be fruitful for recruitment. Contrary to the conventional
opinion, monetary compensation or reputation gains will not provide a
convincing argument to attract users for participation in virtual product
development in the sample under study. On the one hand this finding is a

positive signal for developing firms, as it suggests that users will largely
participate voluntarily in VCI projects, and won't demand large monetary
compensation or insist on being named as co-creator or co-owner of an
eventual patent. It also discards voices claiming caution when paying
users for participation in VCI as with monetary compensation not only the
intrinsically motivated persons would participate, but also users only
interested in monetary rewards. On the other hand money as an
important and often convincing argument to encourage people to perform
certain behaviors cannot be used.
A fruitful strategy for recruiting users to participate in VCI might
also be to mention the possibilities for product improvement. There
seems to be quite a body of users of medical technology who are not
satisfied with existing products or would at least benefit from
improved technology. Thus, pointing out the advantages of new medical
technologies and stressing the importance of a user's
personal contribution for the product development process might
be convincing arguments in this regard. Also, signaling the opportunity to be among
the first users to benefit from these improved
technologies might further users' willingness to participate(Fller, Faullant, &
Matzler, 2010)

hypotheses. The analytical results implied that, compared to the

influence of conventional motivation, self-concept-based motivation
has a greater influence on individual knowledge-sharing
behavior. Specifically, compared to other motivational sources
analyzed in this study, internal self-concept-based motivation is

the most important motivation for sharing knowledge in Wikipedia.

However, external self-concept motivation is not significantly
related to knowledge sharing intention, probably due to the difficulty
establishing strong links with reference groups in the real
world as well as the lack of social interaction in Wikipedia.
Second, due to the relatively limited interaction in Wikipedia as
compared to that in the general virtual community, intrinsic
motivation also has an insignificant impact on individual willingness
to share knowledge in Wikipedia. Nov (2007) indicated that
personal enjoyment was the main motivation for knowledge
sharing but only considered the ranking of correlation coefficients
between motivation and contribution levels. Conversely, after
testing the overall model, this study found that, although Wikipedians
may initially engage in Wikipedia simply for pleasure,
intrinsic motivation is rarely the dominant motivation for knowledge
sharing in Wikipedia.(Yang & Lai, 2010)

Doorn, J. v., Lemon, K. N., Mittal, V., Nass, S., Pick, D., Pirner, P., et al. (2010).
Customer engagement behavior: theoretical foundations and research
directions. Journal of Service Research, 13(3), 253-266.

Fller, J., Faullant, R., & Matzler, K. (2010). Triggers for virtual customer integration
in the development of medical equipment - from a manufacturer and a user's
perspective. Industrial Marketing Management, 39(8), 1376-1383.
Hollebeek, L. D. (2010). Demystifying customer brand engagement: exploring the
loyalty nexus. Journal of Marketing Management, 27(7-8), 785-807.
Patterson, P., Yu, T., & Ruyter, K. d. (2006). Understanding customer engagement in
services. Paper presented at the Australian and New Zealand Marketing
Academy (ANZMAC) Conference, Australia.
Yang, H.-L., & Lai, C.-Y. (2010). Motivations of wikipedia content contributors.
Computers in Human Behavior, 26(6), 13771383.