Who are you and what do you value? Investigating the role of personality traits and customer-perceived value in online customer engagement

ABSTRACT

While the importance of customer engagement has been widely acknowledged, a gap remains in terms of our understanding of how customers engage with products and services delivered online. Addressing this gap is important given the increasing proportion of time spent interacting with companies online and the key role of customer engagement in delivering an effective customer experience. This paper seeks to address this gap through developing a theoretical framework of online customer engagement (OCE) anchored in 28 semi-structured interviews with members of social media brand communities. This study’s contribution to the customer engagement literature is twofold. First, the study will bring new insights regarding personality traits as an antecedent of OCE and, second, customer-perceived value emerges as a novel consequence of OCE. Understanding what personality traits drive customers to engage online and what value they perceive to receive in this digital age can help managers to better segment and evaluate their customers’ online engagement. Online brand communities can be improved accordingly.

KEYWORDS:

• Customer engagement
• personality traits
• customer-perceived value
• online brand communities
• social media

Acknowledgement

Special thanks are due to Stephan Hauser and Rasha El Gendi for helpful comments on previous versions of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

Julia Marbach is grateful to the Henley Business School for the financial support of her PhD.

Notes on contributors

Julia Marbach

Julia Marbach is a doctoral researcher and teaching assistant at Henley Business School at the University of Reading, UK. Her doctoral research focuses on customer engagement in online brand communities. Her research interests include (i) customer engagement behaviour, (ii) digital marketing, (iii) customer value and (iv) customer experience. Julia has presented papers at international conferences.

Cristiana Raquel Lages

Cristiana R. Lages is an associate professor at Henley Business School at the University of Reading, UK, and Scholar of the Advanced Institute of Management, UK. She holds a PhD in Marketing from the University of Warwick, UK. Her current research interests include (i) service delivery performance and service recovery strategies, (ii) creativity in services, (iii) eWOM and (iv) social media. She has published in Journal of Service Research, Journal of Business Research, Journal of International Marketing, International Marketing Review, European Journal of Marketing and Journal of Services Marketing, among others.

Daniel Nunan

Daniel Nunan is a lecturer in marketing at Henley Business School, University of Reading. He holds a PhD in Marketing from Cranfield School of Management. He has published in leading journals including the Journal of Business Ethics, New Technology, Work and Employment, International Journal of Retail and Distribution Management and numerous articles in the International Journal of Market Research of which he sits on the editorial board. His research interests are in the areas of digital marketing, big data and consumer privacy.