Abstract
The topic of customer engagement via social media is receiving increasing consideration in the literature. Previously, scholars’ use of the notion and dimensionality of customer engagement has been incomplete and inconsistent – an oversight that has significant theoretical and practical repercussions. This paper examines the managerial perspective on customer engagement and performance metrics in the context of social media. Data is collected from three different sources representing the main categories of social media stakeholders. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with managers from 41 companies, 23 advertising/communication agencies, and 10 research/consulting firms and cover a range of views on different social media channels platforms. The results illustrate the gaps between customer engagement’s conceptions, the customer engagement dimensionality, and the metrics of social media performance beyond customer engagement. We also derive theoretical and managerial practical implications and suggest an agenda for future research.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
CMO survey (2017) at https://cmosurvey.org/results/august-2017. Retrieved on 28 December 2017.
References
Abdul-Ghani, E., Hyde, K. F., & Marshall, R. (2011). Emic and etic interpretations of engagement with a consumer-to-consumer online auction site. Journal of Business Research, 64(10), 1060–1066. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2010.10.009.
Algharabat, R., Rana, N. P., Alalwan, A. A., Baabdullah, A., & Gupta, A. (2020). Investigating the antecedents of customer brand engagement and consumer-based brand equity in social media. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 53. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jretconser.2019.01.016.
Bleier, A., Harmeling, C. M., & Palmatier, R. W. (2019). Creating Effective Online Customer Experiences. Journal of Marketing, 83(2), 98–119. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022242918809930.
Bolton, R. N. (2011). Customer engagement: Opportunities and challenges for organizations. Journal of Service Research, 14(3), 272–274. https://doi.org/10.1177/1094670511414582.
Bowden, J. L. H. (2009). The process of consumer engagement: a conceptual framework. Journal of Marketing Theory and Practice, 17(1), 63–74. https://doi.org/10.2753/MTP1069-6679170105.
Brodie, J. R., Hollebeek, L., Juric, B., & Ilic, A. (2011). Consumer engagement: conceptual domain, fundamental propositions and implications for research. Journal of Service Research, 14(3), 252–271. https://doi.org/10.1177/1094670511411703.
Brodie, R. J., Ilic, A., Juric, B., & Hollebeek, L. (2013). Consumer engagement in a virtual brand community: An exploratory analysis. Journal of Business Research, 66(1), 105–114. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2011.07.029.
Cabiddu, F., Carlo, M. D., & Piccoli, G. (2014). Social media affordances: Enabling customer engagement. Annals of Tourism Research., 48, 175–192. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.annals.2014.06.003.
Carlson, J., De Vries, N., Rahman, M., & Voola, R. (2018). Customer engagement behaviours in social media: capturing innovation opportunities. Journal of Services Marketing, 32(1), 83–94. https://doi.org/10.1108/JSM-02-2017-0059.
Carlson, J., Gudergan, S. P., Gelhard, C., & Rahman, M. M. (2019). Customer engagement with brands in social media platforms: Configurations, equifinality and sharing. European Journal of Marketing, 53(9), 1733–1758. https://doi.org/10.1108/EJM-10-2017-0741.
Chiang, C., Wei, C., Parker, K., & Davey, B. (2017). Exploring the drivers of customer engagement behaviours in social network brand communities: Towards a customer-learning model. Journal of Marketing Management, 33(17/18), 1443–1464. https://doi.org/10.1080/0267257X.2017.1399922.
Colicev, A., Malshe, A., Pauwels, K., & O’Connor, P. (2018). Improving consumer mindset metrics and shareholder value through social media: The different roles of owned and earned media. Journal of Marketing, 82(January), 37–56. https://doi.org/10.1509/jm.16.0055.
Dessart, L., Veloutsou, C., & Morgan-Thomas, A. (2015). Consumer engagement in online brand communities: a social media perspective. Journal of Product & Brand Management, 24(1), 28–42. https://doi.org/10.1108/JPBM-06-2014-0635.
Dessart, L., Veloutsou, C., & Morgan-Thomas, A. (2016). Capturing consumer engagement: duality, dimensionality and measurement. Journal of Marketing Management, 32(5–6), 399–426. https://doi.org/10.1080/0267257X.2015.1130738.
Dessart, L. (2017). Social media engagement: A model of antecedents and relational outcomes. Journal of Marketing Management, 33(5–6), 375–399. https://doi.org/10.1080/0267257X.2017.1302975.
Dolan, R., Conduit, J., Frethey-Bentham, C., Fahy, J., & Goodman, S. (2019). Social media engagement behavior: A framework for engaging customers through social media content. European Journal of Marketing, 53(10), 2213–2243. https://doi.org/10.1108/EJM-03-2017-0182.
Dolan, R., Conduit, J., Fahy, J., & Goodman, S. (2016). Social media engagement behaviour: a uses and gratifications perspective. Journal of Strategic Marketing, 24(3-4), 261–277. https://doi.org/10.1080/0965254X.2015.1095222.
Farris, P. W., Bendle, N. T., Pfeifer, P. E., & Reibstein, D. J. (2006). Marketing metrics: 50+ metrics every executive should master. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall https://www.pearson.com/us/higher-education/program/Bendle-Marketing-Metrics-4th-Edition/PGM2833542.html.
Gligor, D., Bozkurt, S., & Russo, I. (2019). Achieving customer engagement with social media: A qualitative comparative analysis approach. Journal of Business Research, 101, 59–69. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2019.04.006.
GlobalWebIndex (2020). Digital 2020: 3.8 billion people use social media. https://wearesocial.com/blog/2020/01/digital-2020-3-8-billion-people-use-socialmedia#:~:text=Worldwide%2C%20there%20are%203.80%20billion,percent)%20over%20the%20past%20year
Grégoire, Y., Salle, A., & Tripp, T. M. (2015). Managing social media crises with your customers: The good, the bad, and the ugly. Business Horizons, 58(2), 173–182. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bushor.2014.11.001.
Guesalaga, R. (2016). The use of social media in sales: Individual and organizational antecedents, and the role of customer engagement in social media. Industrial Marketing Management, 54, 71–79. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.indmarman.2015.12.002.
Guest, G., Bunce, A., & Johnson, L. (2006). How many interviews are enough? An experiment with data saturation and variability. Field Methods, 18(1), 59–82.
Gummerus, J., Liljander, V., Weman, E., & Pihlstrom, M. (2012). Customer engagement in a Facebook brand community. Management Research Review, 35(9), 857–877.
Harrigan, P., Evers, U., Miles, M., & Daly, T. (2017). Customer engagement with tourism social media brands. Tourism Management, 59, 597–609. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tourman.2016.09.015.
Heinonen, K. (2011). Consumer activity in social media: managerial approaches to consumers’ social media behavior. Journal of Consumer Behavior, 10(6), 356–364. https://doi.org/10.1002/cb.376.
Higgins, E. T. (2006). Value from hedonic experience and engagement. Psychological Review, 113(3), 439–460. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.113.3.439.
Higgins, E. T., & Scholer, A. A. (2009). Engaging the consumer: The science and art of the value creation process. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 19(2). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcps.2009.02.002.
Hollebeek, L. (2013). The consumer engagement/value interface: An exploratory investigation. Australasian Marketing Journal, 21(1), 17–24. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ausmj.2012.08.006.
Hollebeek, L., & Chen, T. (2014). Exploring positively versus negatively-valenced brand engagement: a conceptual model. Journal of Product & Brand Management, 23. https://doi.org/10.1108/JPBM-06-2013-0332.
Hollebeek, L., Glynn, M. S., & Brodie, R. J. (2014). Consumer brand engagement in social media: conceptualisation, scale development and validation. Journal of Interactive Marketing, 28(2), 149–165. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.intmar.2013.12.002.
Hollebeek, L. D. (2019). Developing business customer engagement through social media engagement-platforms: An integrative S-D logic/RBV-informed model. Industrial Marketing Management, 81, 89–98. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.indmarman.2017.11.016.
Humphreys, A., & Wang, R. J. H. (2017). Automated text analysis for consumer research. Journal of Consumer Research, 44(6), 1274–1306. https://doi.org/10.1093/jcr/ucx104.
Jaakkola, E., & Alexander, M. (2014). The role of consumer engagement behaviour in value co-creation: a service system perspective. Journal of Service Research, 2(2). https://doi.org/10.1177/1094670514529187.
Jansen, B. J., Zhang, M., Sobel, K., & Chowdury, A. (2009). Twitter power Tweets as electronic word of mouth. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 60, 2169–2188. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.21149.
Kross, E., Verduyn, P., Boyer, M., Drake, B., Gainsburg, I., Vickers, B., Ybarra, O., & Jonides, J. (2018). Does counting emotion words on online social networks provide a window into people’s subjective experience of emotion? A case study on Facebook. Emotion. https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0000416.
Kumar, V., Aksoy, L., Donkers, B., Venkatesan, R., Wiesel, T., & Tillmans, S. (2010). Undervalued or overvalued customers: capturing total customer engagement value. Journal of Service Research, 13(3), 297–310. https://doi.org/10.1177/1094670510375602.
Kumar, V., Choi, J. W. B., & Greene, M. (2017). Synergistic effects of social media and traditional marketing on brand sales: capturing the time-varying effects. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 45, 268–288. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11747-016-0484-7.
Liu, X., Shin, H., & Burns, A. C. (2019). Examining the impact of luxury brand’s social media marketing on customer engagement: Using big data analytics and natural language processing. Journal of Business Research. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2019.04.042.
Muntinga, D. G., Moorman, M., & Smit, E. G. (2011). Introducing COBRAs: Exploring motivations for Brand-Related social media use. International Journal of Advertising, 30(1), 13–46. https://doi.org/10.2501/IJA-30-1-013-046.
Malthouse, E. C., Haenlein, M., Skiera, B., Wege, E., & Zhang, M. (2013). Managing customer relationships in the social media era: Introducing the social CRM house. Journal of Interactive Marketing, 27(4), 270–280. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.intmar.2013.09.008.
Moorman, C. (2017). How companies can capitalize on social media investments. Retrieved 2 January, 2018, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/christinemoorman/2017/07/26/how-companies-can-capitalize-on-social-media-investments/#7594e66a7b3c.
Moro, S., Rita, P., & Vala, B. (2016). Predicting social media performance metrics and evaluation of the impact on brand building: a data mining approach. Journal of Business Research, 69(9), 3341–3351. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2016.02.010.
Naik, P. A., & Raman, K. (2003). Understanding the impact of synergy in multimedia communications. Journal of Marketing Research, 40(4), 375–388. https://doi.org/10.1509/jmkr.40.4.375.19385.
Oh, C., Roumani, Y., Nwankpa, J., & Hu, H. (2017). Beyond likes and tweets: Consumer engagement behavior and movie box office in social media. Information & Management, 54(1), 25–37. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.im.2016.03.004.
Paniagua, J., & Sapena, J. (2014). Business performance and social media: Love or hate? Business Horizons, 57(6), 719–728. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bushor.2014.07.005.
Peters, K., Chen, Y., Kaplan, A. M., Ognibeni, B., & Pauwels, K. (2013). Social media metrics — A Framework and guidelines for managing social media. Journal of Interactive Marketing, 27(4), 281–298. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.intmar.2013.09.007.
Rawson, A., Duncan, E., & Jones, C. (2013). The truth about customer experience. Harvard Business Review (September).
Riege, A. M. (2003). Validity and reliability tests in case study research: A literature review with “hands-on” applications for each research phase. Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal, 6(2), 75–86. https://doi.org/10.1108/13522750310470055.
Sashi, C. M. (2012). Customer engagement, buyer-seller relationships, and social media. Management Decision, 50(2), 253–272. https://doi.org/10.1108/00251741211203551.
Saboo, A. R., Kumar, V., & Ramani, G. (2016). Evaluating the impact of social media activities on human brand sales. International Journal of Research in Marketing, 33(3), 524–541. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijresmar.2015.02.007.
Sim, M., & Plewa, C. (2017). Customer engagement with a service provider and context: an empirical examination. Journal of Service Theory and Practice, 27(4), 854–876. https://doi.org/10.1108/JSTP-03-2016-0057.
Simon, F., & Tossan, V. (2018). Does brand-consumer social sharing matter? A relational framework of customer engagement to brand-hosted social media. Journal of Business Research, 85, 175–184. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2017.12.050.
Smith, A. N., Fischer, E., & Chen, Y. (2012). How does brand-related user-generated content differ across YouTube, facebook, and twitter? Journal of Interactive Marketing, 26(2), 102–113. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.intmar.2012.01.002.
So, K. F., King, C., & Sparks, B. (2014). Consumer engagement with tourism brands: scale development and validation. Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Research, 38(3), 304–329. https://doi.org/10.1177/1096348012451456.
Spiggle, S. (1994). Analysis and interpretation of qualitative data in consumer research. Journal of Consumer Research, 21(December), 491–503. https://doi.org/10.1086/209413.
Sprott, D., Czellar, S., & Spangenberg, E. (2009). The importance of a general measure of brand engagement on market behaviour: development and validation of a scale. Journal of Marketing Research, 46(2), 92–104. https://doi.org/10.1509/jmkr.46.1.92.
Srinivasan, S., Rutz, O. J., & Pauwels, K. (2015). Paths to and off purchase: quantifying the impact of traditional marketing and online consumer activity. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 44(4), 440–453. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11747-015-0431-z.
Statista (2020). Social media statistics & facts. Retrieved May 18, 2020, from https://www.statista.com/statistics/617136/digital-population-worldwide/.
Van Doorn, J., Lemon, K., Mittal, V., Naas, S., Pick, D., Pirner, P., & Verhoef, P. (2010). Customer engagement behaviour: theoretical foundations and research directions. Journal of Service Research, 13(3), 253–266. https://doi.org/10.1177/1094670510375599.
Verhoef, P. C., Reinartz, W. J., & Krafft, M. (2010). Consumer engagement as a new perspective in consumer management. Journal of Service Research, 13(3), 247–252. https://doi.org/10.1177/1094670510375461.
Voorveld, H. A., van Noort, G., Muntinga, D. G., & Bronner, F. (2018). Engagement with social media and social media advertising: the differentiating role of platform type. Journal of Advertising, 47(1), 38–54. https://doi.org/10.1080/00913367.2017.1405754.
Wang, T., & Lee, F.-Y. (2020). Examining customer engagement and brand intimacy in social media context. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 54. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jretconser.2020.102035.
Wieneke, A., & Lehrer, C. (2016). Generating and exploiting customer insights from social media data. Electronic Markets, 26(3), 245–268. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12525-016-0226-1.
Wu, J., Chen, H., Chen, J., Dou, W., & Shao, D. (2019). What to say on social media and how: Effects of communication style and function on online customer engagement in China. Journal of Service Theory and Practice, 29(5–6), 691–707. https://doi.org/10.1108/JSTP-11-2018-0243.
Yoo, M., Yang, W., & Kim, B. (2020). Online engagement among restaurant customers: the importance of enhancing flow for social media users. Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Research, 44(2), 252–277. https://doi.org/10.1177/1096348019887202.
Zhang, M., Guo, L., Hu, M., & Liu, W. (2017). Influence of customer engagement with company social networks on stickiness: Mediating effect of customer value creation. International Journal of Information Management, 37(3), 229–240. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijinfomgt.2016.04.010.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Responsible Editor: Volker Bach
Publisher’s note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Appendix 1
Appendix 1
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Boujena, O., Ulrich, I., Manthiou, A. et al. Customer engagement and performance in social media: a managerial perspective. Electron Markets 31, 965–987 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12525-020-00450-3
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12525-020-00450-3