The process of customer brand engagement in interactive contexts: Prerequisites, conceptual foundations, antecedents, and outcomes
Abstract
The purpose of this thesis is to develop a conceptual and theoretical understanding of customer
brand engagement (CBE) that is useful for practitioners, particularly for service firms utilizing
interactive platforms in building customer-brand relationships. Arguably, there is a need for
more research to construct theories of the role of CBE in brand relationships and to test theories
of antecedents and outcomes of CBE. This thesis provides an overview of the CBE and the
consumer/customer engagement (CE) literature, and four articles applying different theoretical
perspectives that together provide a comprehensive understanding of CBE in interactive
contexts. CBE is investigated in relation to customers as the engagement subjects, and brands
(i.e., brand relationships, brand activities) as the engagement objects.