An Investigation into the Driving Mechanisms of Consumer Engagement

Consumer engagement has received a lot of attention as an innovative strategic approach to managing consumer–brand relationships (Brodie et al. 2011; Hollebeek 2011; Kumar et al. 2010; Mangold and Faulds 2009; Van Doorn et al. 2010). The beneficial effects of an engaged consumer base are believed to be numerous and include enhancement of viral marketing activities (Harvey et al. 2011), increased brand support through product recommendations (Brodie et al. 2013), greater brand exposure in consumers’ social networks, and finally potential prospect acquisitions (Kumar et al. 2010). Despite the established relevance of consumer engagement particularly in brand-supporting behavior, extant literature mainly addresses the conceptualization of consumer engagement (Brodie et al. 2011; Hollebeek and Chen 2014; Van Doorn et al. 2010; Kumar et al. 2010), investigating the consequences of engagement (Bowden 2009; Chan and Li 2010; Gruen et al. 2006; Gummerus et al. 2010; Hollebeek 2011). What remains under-researched however are the driving forces of consumer engagement, surging the necessity to work in this direction (Bolton 2011; Verhoef et al. 2010). This research comes to address this gap by developing a conceptual framework that includes various content characteristics and empirically testing it using four brands that have a social media presence.