Exploring the process of customer engagement, self-brand connections and loyalty

Traditional measures of customer loyalty have been criticized for being too static and one-dimensional in nature and as such, customer engagement, or CE, has surfaced as a more dynamic and interactive concept through which to understand the nature of the customer-brand relationship. Despite recent and increasing interest in the theoretical foundations of CE, attempts to capture its potential antecedents and consequences continue to lack empirical clarity. This study addresses this gap by empirically exploring the operation of CE through its proposed antecedents of: satisfaction, trust, affective commitment and rapport; and proposed consequences, being: self-brand connections and loyalty. The relationships between the antecedents and consequences of engagement are then examined across a range of service types. The results revealed affective commitment to be a strong driver of self-brand connections, whereas satisfaction held greater importance for the formation of customer loyalty. Surprisingly, trust was found to have a negative relationship to self-brand connections. The findings of this research enable managers to better understand how the outcomes of CE, namely loyalty and self-brand connections, can be driven across range of service types.