Conceptualising customer engagement, disengagement and wellbeing within local government services: a transformative service approach

Whilst the social services have been largely over looked within services marketing literature, academics are increasingly recognising the need for ‘traditional’ marketing theories to extend beyond their commercial contexts. This paper offers an initial conceptualisation of how emerging concepts from service marketing, namely customer engagement (CE) and customer disengagement (CD), may be applied within a social service, being local governments. This conceptual paper will discuss the relevance of exploring CE and CD within Australian local governments, which have experienced recent legislative pressure to ensure high levels of engagement among their communities. It will also consider how the horizontal and vertical network types within this unique service environment may affect the operation of CE and CD. In light of increasing interest surrounding transformative service research (TSR), this paper will introduce the notion of consumer wellbeing; and suggest how CE and CD may influence measures of wellbeing among local government service customers.