This study focuses on the digital generation in China and their engagement in social media to co-create values with firms. The study employed a qualitative research approach to first develop a social media co-creation value scale. This was followed by motivational analysis of social media engagement to co-create values. A spectrum of utilitarian and hedonic motives related to value co-creation behaviors via social media were then identified. Many theoretical and practical implications are provided based on the study findings.

This study discusses how firm-customer interactions impact customer engagement behaviors in the area of hospitality and tourism services. In the current study, two research questions are raised to answer: 1) what values are perceived by customers through firm-customer interactions during various service encounters? 2) how customer engagement behaviors are led by the customer perceived values? To test the proposed model, a quantitative approach is adopted. Amazon Mechanical Turk is used as data collection platform to collect responses with the aid of Qualtrics as questionnaire development tool. To reach the maximum scope of hospitality and tourism services, hotel guests, restaurant patrons, travelers, airline customers, and theme park travelers are included in the sample. This study adopts a quantitative approach to investigate the factors that contribute to the varied customer engagement behaviors (i.e. online ratings, online reviews, online blogging, and customer-to-customer interactions). Successful industry practices demonstrate that customer engagement brings many benefits and opportunities to maintain business sustainability and profitability.

To investigate the value co-creation process in wellness tourism, this study constructed a structural equation model of customer interactions with (1) the environment, (2) service employees, and (3) other customers relating to customer-perceived value and customer engagement. Empirical data were collected from 528 survey respondents who were at wellness tourism resorts. The results reveal that all three types of interaction have positive effects on customer-perceived value, and that perceived value positively affects customer engagement. Based on this finding, management recommendations for wellness tourism service enterprises are given.

Value co-creation has become an emerging venue of the customer engagement research. The purpose of the study is to investigate a model that represents the process (behavior and value) and consequence (satisfaction) of customer co-creation in the restaurant context. Specifically, with the theoretical support of service-dominant logic, the present study explores customer co-creation behavior as a key predictor of co-created value, which in turn leads to customer satisfaction. The results of the study confirm that customer value cocreation is a subtle process by examining the relationship between customer co-creation behavior at the “co-production” stage and co-created value at the “co-creation of value” stage. The findings of the study contribute to the evolving knowledge of customer cocreation of value, and offer practitioners in the hospitality and tourism industry effective marketing strategies based on re-examining customer relationships and engagement, thereby maximizing customer value.

Engaged customers are a crucial asset in many service industries, especially in the tourism and hospitality context (e.g. So, King, Sparks, Wang, & Hall, 2016). Positive effects of customer engagement (CE), such as word-of-mouth, community participation, or provision of new ideas for services are likely to become increasingly important for companies and help them develop unique offerings and generate new revenue streams (e.g. Kumar & Pansari, 2016; Venkatesan, 2017; Verhoef, Reinartz, & Krafft, 2010). Although previous research has repeatedly emphasized the positive effects of CE, the patterns that bring about CE are less clear. This research contributes to the investigation of CE antecedents and draws on data elicited from a series of focus group discussions and interviews with customers, experts and executives in the services, hotel, and tourism industry. The findings from these qualitative studies point to complex patterns of customer and firm based antecedents (e.g. Brodie et al., 2011; van Doorn et al., 2010) that play a role in stimulating CE. Among other results, the findings show that customers exhibit different motives for engaging, such as feelings of familiarity, pride and belonging, helpfulness or emotions and companies need to adjust their approaches to meet these motives. In sum, these findings contribute to the literature on CE by unveiling different antecedents of CE and investigating their interplay. This article also contributes to the services and relationship management literature by investigating which relationship characteristics play a role in CE and how they bring about engagement behaviors.

The service setting is more than ever dynamic. Customers’ engagement is changing due to the multiple interactions at different levels of the consumption experience journey. The customer as an active and engaged value co-creator raises new challenges to theory and practice. However, the connection between engagement and co-creation is scarce in the literature. The experience of the active hotel customer occurs through customer engagement with internal actors and factors from prepurchase through to post-purchase. Since value co-creation results from the engagement of multiple factors and actors (f/actors) in the process, it is essential to understand the actors’ activities that promote or obstruct this process. This paper proposes a connection between customer engagement (CE) and value co-creation framework to ascertain and depict the internal actors’ activities and factors that foster or hinder customers’ experience in the hotel industry. The researchers used qualitative methods (35 in-depth interviews, document analysis and 4 observation sessions) in seven regions in Ghana to explore the customer’s perspective. Data was analysed with Nvivo11, within a thematic analysis framework. Findings suggest that customer’s engagement within the hotel environment with multiple actors has an influence on customer value co-creation/destruction process. It found that positive and negative engagement fosters/hinders guests’ interactions which lead to value cocreation/ destruction. The research also discovered that negative interactions occasioned by any factor/actor triggers value destruction at multiple stages of the experience journey. The study suggests theoretical and managerial implications focused on the actors’ practices that foster or hinder customer engagement and value co-creation.

Customer online engagement is crucial to online travel websites which depend online reviews to attract new users and maintain current ones. The distinctive features of public attractions in tourism and the unique webdesign of TripAdvisor create an empirical environment for this study to explore the influence of customer experience and satisfaction on their engagement in posting reviews regarding public goods. Based on a sample of TripAdvisor-listed attractions and considering the information from over 37,000 online reviews, the empirical findings suggest that (1) customer online engagement is stronger (weaker) on paid (public) attractions, and (2) the positive effect of satisfaction on customer engagement in posting reviews is more evident among public attractions rather than paid attractions. This study concludes by offering managerial implications to regulators of public attractions, operators of travel websites, and managers of paid attractions.

This research examines the concepts of customer brand engagement (CBE) and perceived social presence (PSP) in a corporate Facebook context, and tests whether CBE and PSP have an impact on brand trust. CBE has well-defined sub-dimensions that are about behavioral, emotional and cognitive, and motivational aspects. The sample (n=461) is from Kuwait, and asks about use of corporate Facebook pages for smart phones. All three of the CBE sub-dimensions have a significant impact on brand trust. PSP influences the CBE sub-dimensions, and it also influences brand trust directly. Brand trust does impact brand loyalty in the corporate Facebook context.

The aim of this paper is to understand which are the most effective social media strategies for gaining customer engagement for fashion companies. The study has been conducted using the empirical research methodology and the information has been collected with the use of an online survey distributed among companies belonging to the fashion industry. 42 questionnaires have been collected and therefore discussed. The analysis led to the definition of a list of strategies used by fashion companies on the adoption of social media tools. Subsequently, activities and the social tools able to improve customer engagement have been analysed. Finally, according to the size of the companies and to their positioning on the market, a descriptive analysis of the results have been carried out, comparing companies with similar characteristics. The research shows that companies of the same segment adopt the same approach to social media as well as a similar set of social media marketing strategies. The findings of this paper confirm the growing interest both from academics and practitioners for Social Media Marketing tools and they will suggest implications to fashion brands to manage their customer engagement and their social media activity.

In the information age, the relationship between customers and companies is not just about the relationship between consumers and products provided. In the online shopping context, customers are connected to the companies through the Internet before and after the purchase. The concept of "customer engagement" is also formed during the process. In short, customer engagement is the connection that an enterprise establishes with customers through marketing activities. Specifically, customer engagement refers to a series of transactions or non-dealing behaviors of the enterprise, including the interaction between enterprise and the customer, customer's participation behavior and other related behavior, which affects the customer's enthusiasm, social interaction, and conscious participation. Based on the emerging concept of customer engagement, this research keeps up with latest dynamics of online environment and tries to explore the role of customer engagement in the context of social media. Since there are a variety of social media platforms existing, we choose one of the most popular social media platforms in China, WeChat, to investigate the impact of customer engagement on brand loyalty to help companies improve customer's brand loyalty through social media marketing.