FOULING HELADO

To the knowledge of the author, at the time of writing this thesis, the recent study by Baldus et al. (2015) is the only empirical study to examine the dimensions of customer engagement in the online brand community. Similar to the objective of the current research, Baldus et al. (2015) have conducted a study to develop a reliable and valid scale for the customer engagement construct.

One of the important weaknesses is that Baldus et al. (2015) consider both the construct’s antecedents and dimensions as dimensions of customer engagement in the online brand community. Seeing antecedents as a dimension does not offer a clear understanding of the construct and thus the developed items do not measure the construct itself. It is extremely important to note that the objective of item development for a specific construct is to provide an empirical estimate of a specific theoretical construct of interest (Gerbing and Anderson, 1988). Up-to-date information, rewards, connecting and self-expression are the proposed dimensions that have been examined as antecedents in prior literature. A large body of studies including the current research examines up-to-date information as the antecedent of engagement. The studies by Dholakia et al. (2009) and Lin (2008) are examples of this group of studies that explore up-to-date information as the antecedent of participation in a community. Bagozzi et al. (2004) examine the importance of rewards as important motivation to engage in the online community. In addition, connecting and self-expression are examined in the studies of Bagozzi and Dholakia (2006), Carlson et al. (2008) and Zhou (2011).

The other possible limitation of Baldus et al.’s (2015) study is related to its research design and specifically the method used to identify the engagement dimensions. The study follows a grounded theory approach to identify the construct’s dimensions in order to develop the scale. It uses a series of qualitative research efforts including focus groups and qualitative surveys to identify dimensions of the construct. A lack of observation of the online brand community limits the understanding of the actual customer behaviour in this complex environment. There are several studies that suggest the netnography method as an appropriate research approach for studying online communities. This method was introduced by Kozinets (1999), and then a number of studies such as Muniz and Guinn (2001) and Brodie et al. (2013) have adopted a netnographic methodology to explore customer behaviour in online user groups. In this method,

the researcher adapts the ethnographic research technique in order to study online communities.

3.5 Summary

This chapter has systematically reviewed the existing customer engagement literature. Prior studies were categorised into two groups titled ‘Before 2010’ and ‘After 2010’. It was found that these studies made only limited attempts to examine the concept of customer engagement, and the dominant studies emphasised related concepts such as participation. It was observed that the concept of engagement emerged in the marketing literature after 2010. All the reviewed studies conceptualised engagement as a multi-dimensional concept that plays an important role in a nomological net of focal conceptual relationships. The current research adopts the definition of customer engagement proposed by Brodie et al. (2013) comprising five dimensions: socialising, learning, advocating, sharing and co-developing. The definition is in line with the objective of the current research, which is to develop a reliable and valid customer engagement scale.

The current research has included the latest customer engagement studies in the second stage of the literature review, including Baldus et al.’s (2015) newly published study on customer engagement in the online brand community. This chapter ended with the discussion on the limitations of Baldus et al.’s study.

Next chapter presents the conceptual model that explains the relationship between the customer engagement and the potential antecedents and consequences. Nomological validity of the construct’s scale will be tested using the proposed framework in the next chapter.

Chapter Four

Theoretical Framework and Hypotheses

4.1 Introduction

The previous chapter has presented a systematic literature review on customer engagement. Reviewing the existing studies has identified an important gap, which is a lack of empirical studies outlining customer engagement scales in the marketing literature. The objective of this chapter is to address the second research objective, “To develop a customer engagement model in online brand communities based on the Elaboration Likelihood Model”.

This chapter aims to present a conceptual model of the relationships between customer engagement and potential antecedents and consequences. The conceptual model provides a means by which to test the nomological validity of the customer engagement construct. This chapter is structured as follows.

It begins with an explanation of the current models used to explain customer engagement or related concepts such as participation in the online community. The two main models used in the pioneer articles are reviewed, the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB); these have been the two main models used to study customer behaviour in the online community. The literature related to each model is reviewed and the models’ applications are presented and discussed, followed by a detailed review of their limitations.

The new model is proposed after reviewing the current models, which explicates a number of potential antecedents and consequences of customer engagement. Social influence variables as well as information quality are adopted as the antecedents of the proposed customer engagement process model. The proposed model is based on the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM), which is extensively used in psychology studies. The reasons behind the adoption of this model are mentioned and the chapter addresses how this model is incorporated with Social Influence Theory to explain the customer engagement process in the online brand community and its outputs. A large body of research in psychology studies has investigated the nature of the ELM and explained how individuals evaluate the information process in their minds. However,

the mental information processing is beyond the scope of this study, which is only concerned with the stages of the processes and elements that impact on these processes.

Based on the proposed model, related hypotheses are suggested. Each hypothesis and its explanations are separately discussed. By presenting the summary of the hypotheses, this chapter leads to the research methodology chapter.