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Customer Engagement Behavior: Theoretical Foundations and Research

Directions

Article in Journal of Service Research · August 2010

DOI: 10.1177/1094670510375599

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Jenny van Doorn Vikas Mittal

University of Groningen Rice University
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 August 1, 2010

Customer Engagement Behavior: Theoretical Foundations and Research Directions

Jenny van Doorn Doreén Pick
University of Groningen Freie Universität

Katherine N. Lemon Peter Pirner

Boston College TNS Infratest GmbH

Vikas Mittal Peter C. Verhoef

Rice University University of Groningen

Stephan Nass
University of Münster

Executive Summary

Many customer-focused concepts in marketing (e.g., brand experience, brand–consumer connections, customer equity) imply
that customers engage in customer–firm relationships to exert greater influence on the firm. However, investigation of consumer
behaviors that are beneficial for a firm—purchasing, word-of-mouth, and beyond—has been fragmentary, offering no unifying
framework to integrate the various customer behaviors. Are customers who purchase sparsely but exhibit many other desirable
engagement behaviors a segment that can be pursued and nurtured advantageously?

In this article, the authors develop and discuss the concept of customer engagement behaviors (CEBs), which they define as
the customers’ behavioral manifestation toward a brand or firm, beyond purchase, that results from motivational drivers. These CEBs
include a vast array of behaviors, including word-of-mouth activity, recommendations, helping other customers, blogging, writing
reviews, and even engaging in legal action. Thus, CEBs are an integrative behavioral concept that capture how and why customers
behave in ways relevant to the firm and its multiple stakeholders, such as its competitors, employees, firm suppliers, and even
regulators.

The authors develop a conceptual model of the antecedents and consequences—customer, firm, and societal—of customer
engagement behaviors. Furthermore, they suggest that firms can manage customer engagement behaviors by taking a more integrative
and comprehensive approach that acknowledges their evolution and impact over time and propose a three-stage customer engagement
management process:

1. Identification: The key challenge is to identify the different forms of CEB, actors, places, and content of CEB and thus to
understand its potential effect.
2. Evaluation: In this stage, CEBs can be evaluated according to their valence, quantity, the channel utilized, as well as
their short- and long-term effects.
3. (Re-)Action: A firm should develop a set of capabilities and resources to manage CEB. Four broad areas of activities
should be considered, depending on the valence potential and action direction: leveraging, neutralizing, mitigating and
translating, and stimulating CEBs.

This special issue of the Journal of Service Research is co-edited by Peter Verhoef, Werner Reinartz, and Manfred Krafft.

Hayden Smith Marketing Department Voice: (617) 552 3389

Katherine N. Lemon Editorial Assistant Carroll School of Management Fax: (617) 552 6677
Editor Boston College
Kat Brandenburg 140 Commonwealth Ave JSR@bc.edu
Editorial Assistant Chestnut Hill, MA 02467 http://jsr.sagepub.com/

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