The Process of customer engagement, self-brand connections and loyalty within hedonic and utilitarian services

Traditional measures of customer loyalty have been criticized for being too one dimensional in nature. A more dynamic concept through which to understand the nature of the customer-brand relationship is customer engagement (CE). Despite recent and increasing interest in the foundations of CE, the antecedents and consequences of CE have yet to be empirically tested. This study addresses the gap in marketing through two research objectives. Firstly, the study explores the operation of CE through its antecedents: satisfaction, trust, affective commitment and rapport, and consequences: self-brand connections and loyalty. Secondly, the salience of these antecedents on engagement; self-brand connections and loyalty is examined across a range of hedonic and utilitarian service types. The results revealed that affective commitment was a strong antecedent to self-brand connections, whereas satisfaction held greater importance for customer loyalty. Surprisingly, trust had a negative relationship to self-brand connections. Interestingly, the four antecedents to CE were found to operate equally across both service categories.