The integration of Live streaming and E-commerce, also known as Live commerce, has been widely used in Asia. The live commerce market in China, which leads the live commerce business, reached 2.36 trillion yuan (about 340 billion dollars) at the end of 2021. While revenue is an important indicator for a company, customer engagement in live commerce, which can acquire potential customers through brand loyalty formation, community building, and information sharing, is also a crucial indicator in consideration of long-term development.

The subscription model, prominent within the ‘subscription economy’ (SE), is now a popular form of business within many industries. In simple terms, a subscription model entails two parties (customers and firms) entering into an agreement whereby the patron commits to make regular payments to the supplier, who in exchange periodically delivers an agreed bundle of goods and/or services. Although mostly applied within Business-to-Consumer (B2C) markets (e.g. entertainment services, newspapers and media industry, software licences), the subscription model can be found in Business-to-Business (B2B) markets also (e.g. Rolls Royce ‘Power-by-the-hour model’). This unique form of commerce (i.e. committed repeat patronage) creates an alternative relationship between the buyer and seller to other more traditional forms of business.

Customer engagement has been a focus of a significant amount of research. Most of the prior research on customer engagement typically focused on engagement and loyalty in loyalty program context, while the impact of rewarded customer engagement on program members has largely been missed out. Additionally, no prior study yet has focused on the conceptualization of rewarded customer engagement, while exploring and comparing its significance on various digital platforms, such as loyalty programs and Metaverse. Thus, this study aims to conceptualize rewarded customer engagement while investigating its impact on loyalty program members, and whether it induces and/or encourages their engagement in brand’s Metaverse platform(s).

This study examines the performance of a penalized neural network and the replication of a customer engagement survey scale with text information in the hotel industry. Although the empirical analysis shows highly accurate model performance only in the training sample, the results also clarify the issues of the engagement scale.

Over the last few years, customer engagement is being reimagined from the lens of relationship marketing in light of interactive brand experiences in order to eternalize long term customer engagement value. However, instilling engagement through dedication and involvement is becoming arduous for brands due to radically escalating digital technologies rendering the inefficacy in practitioner’s attempts. Simultaneously, the employment of hedonic technologies like gamification is catapulting for utilitarian aspirations including customer engagement. Gamification is an emerging field of study which is being intrinsically tied to customer engagement with the later not being the sole purpose of gamified platforms but a medium for subsequent brand related outcomes. Crafting digital interfaces that are straightforward to use and more interactive has become a successful approach for practitioners to engage customers and make tedious and repetitive tasks more pleasurable through gamification. Global organizations such as Walmart, Starbucks and Amazon employ game mechanics evidencing that gamification can reinforce engagement with customers.

Engagement is a central aspect of discussions surrounding online brand communities. The current paper advances the existing thinking associated with conceptualisation of engagement in the context of online brand communities. By understanding how brands engage in an online community we can provide better community management and benefit a brand.

Customers’ service experience is related to the perceived state in the process of interacting with the target at various channel touchpoints (Kaushal & Yadav, 2023). Furthermore, positive customers’ service experiences can increase the repurchase intention of buyers by strengthening the interconnection and cooperation between buyers and suppliers in business-to-business (B2B) firms and reinforcing corporate competitive positioning.

Customer value co-creation behavior (CVCB) has been regarded as a strong predictor of firm performance in many industries for decades. CVCB—the customer’s direct and indirect contribution of resources to enhance the offering of the focal agent/object—is ubiquitous in service industries. Recently, customer engagement has been identified as a determinant of the value realized by customers and businesses. Customer psychological engagement (CPEngagement) is a multidimensional customer-firm relationship marked by customer satisfaction and emotional connectedness to the firm. Although there is concurrence that customer engagement and CVCB are linked, scholars diverge as to the precise nature of the relationship. Marketing and hospitality literature have not yet developed an integrated model of customer engagement with the digital and physical components of hospitality services. Given the increasing managerial interest in digital customer engagement and value co-creation behaviors, it is essential to enhance our understanding of the interplay between these concepts and their implications for both consumers and businesses. This research investigates the relationship between CPEngagement and value co-creation in the digital and physical aspects of hospitality services.

This research aims to assess the current status of online trade relations between Kuwait and Portugal. To do so, we examine how firm managers from Portugal and Kuwait use online platforms to engage customers to enhance firm performance. A set of existing constructs was chosen (Online Experience, Customer Inspiration, Online Customer Engagement, Firm Performance, National Culture), which were included in a proposed model of structural equations, in order to assess the contribution of Online Experience and Customer inspiration to the current status of online trade relations (through Online Customer Engagement), and how these can be improved to the further development of e-commerce between the two countries.

This research seeks to unveil how YouTube influencers and digital interaction can contribute to the process of customer-brand relationship and engagement. Based on in-depth interviews of female Youtubers devoted to the lifestyle categories, we aim to comprehend the engagement factors that influencers should rely on to promote engagement between their followers and the brands they advocate.

The study builds and tests a framework investigating the determinants of customer engagement with luxury brands on social media platforms.

The study builds and tests a framework investigating the determinants of customer engagement with luxury brands on social media platforms.

The concept of co-creation with consumers has been extensively studied in the literature documented in innovation management and marketing literatures. In this study, we contribute to the literature threefold. First, we develop a model to investigate how co-creation with fans enhance purchase intent and engagement of other customers. Second, we test the model using the data collected from consumers on four different product categories including beer, car, cosmetics and travel. By doing so, we examine the differences between product vs. service as well as different product categories. Third, we will compare the results with that of ordinary consumers to check if there are any differences in the case of co-creating with fans. Most of the extant studies have found a positive effect of co-creation on the outcome evaluation. However, engaging other consumers by co-creation with fans has not been studied. For bridging this research gap, we developed a conceptual model to investigate the antecedents and consequences of co-creation with fans. The hypotheses are as follows. H1: Product class involvement and domain specific knowledge affect perception on co-creation positively. H2: Perception on co-creation affects purchase intent and word-of-mouth positively. H3: The relationships of H1 and H2 differs depending on product categories. H4: The relationships of H1 and H2 differs if companies work with ordinary customers or fans. We tested the hypotheses with the data collected from consumers an online questionnaire survey. Data collection was conducted through a market research agency in 2016 for beer and cars, and in 2019 for cosmetics and travel. The data was collected from 240 consumers in their 20s, 30s, and 40s in Japan. Each segment has same number of males and females, 40 people each for six segments. The findings shed a new light on the co-creation literature and help companies to design better co-creation with fans in different product and service categories.

Luxury companies are striving to improve their communication with customers while paying attention to online promotion and marketing activities. As companies interact with customers in luxury brand communities via various channels, they yield consumers higher value throughout the effective consumption process. In addition, this connection enhances customers’ understanding of the company, making it easier for companies to acquire empathy from customers. This study aims to analyze the value factors that affect luxury brand community members’ purchase intention and brand attitude. This study utilizes online survey results of four hundred prestige brand community users in China. The results reveal the positive effects of customer engagement on customer psychological empowerment and flow, the positive impacts of customer psychological empowerment and flow on community identity and brand attachment, the positive effects of community identity on purchase intentions, and the positive effects of brand attachment on purchase intentions and brand attitude. Furthermore, the results show that community types and fashion involvement partially moderate customer engagement. This study provides theoretical suggestions for relationship marketing in the luxury brand community environment. Last, this study presents practical implications that companies could utilize to create an emotional connection with their community members, resulting in an increase of customer support.

Since social media has become an essential tool in the contemporary hotel industry, companies are now building social media communities to engage customers online (Leung & Bai, 2013) and to maintain satisfaction, trust, commitment, loyalty, and brand relationship quality (Harrigan, Evers, Miles, & Daly, 2017). Despite global hotel companies’ increasing adoption of social media platforms to promote customer engagement, research in this area is still sparse (Harrigan et al., 2017; So, King, & Sparks, 2014). To fill this gap, the authors developed a theoretical model incorporating two antecedents (hotel brand experience and customer involvement to social media) and a consequence (brand relationship quality) of customer engagement (CE) in the context of hotel brand communities embedded in social media. Additionally, the authors included hotel brand reputation (HBR) in the model as another predictor of brand relationship quality (BRQ). This study obtained data from a panel survey consisting of the responses of hotel customers who had stayed at one of ten famous hotel brands in the U.S. within the past 12 months and were simultaneously followers of the hotel brand’s page on Facebook. The findings reveal that both antecedents (ISM and HBX) positively and significantly influence CE and that hotel brand experience (HBX) has a stronger impact on CE than ISM. The findings also demonstrate that CE has the strongest, positive effect on BRQ, followed by HBX and HBR. Furthermore, the findings indicate that the relationship between HBX and BRQ is partially and significantly mediated by CE. This research provides theoretical and practical contributions to the field. First, unlike previous studies, the current study utilized the concept of CE with hotel brand communities embedded in social media as a mediator between HBX and BRQ and found partial and significant mediation effects. Second, the study identified two new and crucial antecedents of CE with brand communities embedded in social media—customer brand experience and customer social media involvement. Third, this study found brand relationship quality as one of the primary outcomes of customer engagement with hotel brand communities in social media. Lastly, the findings confirm that social media-based brand communities (i.e., Facebook) are one tool companies can use to build long-lasting customer-brand relationships.

The restaurant industry is more engaged in innovation now. Many entrepreneurs realized that the restaurant sector faces major challenging market environments: changing needs of customers, high competition, low barriers to entry, high labor costs, and innovation technology. The market orientation drives business learning about customers. Engaged customers can assist firms to improve performance by getting involved with the firm’s product innovation. Innovation could help restaurants to improve the products and service quality, cut costs, increase sales and profits; it is the basic condition for the survival of restaurant entrepreneurs. However, studies about how the innovation affects restaurant performance were still limited to describe the overview of products innovation process (Ivkov et al., 2016). Resource-based theory takes the internal resources and capabilities of a firm as valuable sources of competitive advantage. How to combine internal resources and quickly respond to market needs to create performance of innovation entrepreneurship that still unclear and worth exploring in depth discussion. Based on the above, This study personal interview with twelve restaurant entrepreneur, government experts and scholars reveal how absorptive capacity could strengthen the link between positional advantage and innovation for entrepreneurship restaurants with the influence of customer engagement. The positional advantages can make enterprise differentiate with their competitors, that including entrepreneurial orientation, human capital and market orientation (Jogaratnam,2017). The experts believe that innovation entrepreneurs need to adopt an open mind, seek new opportunities in the catering market, acquire or develop new technologies and launching new products / services in the market, using high returns and high risk strategies in search of success in market. Training and educating team members are effective way to improve their innovation entrepreneurship.

An increasing number of Internet users use hotel booking websites and online travel agencies to arrange trips and search for information related to their travels. This study investigates the impact of customer engagement on user perceptions of the quality and value of an online hotel-booking website, as well as whether such perceptions further influence user trust in online websites (eTrust) and result in behavioral intention of eLoyalty. The empirical results of structural equation modeling analysis of 400 questionnaire results collected in Taiwan reveal that customer engagement has a positive impact on perceived website quality (i.e., usability, ease of use, entertainment, and complementarity), which in turn influences perceived value. The results do not show a direct impact from customer engagement on perceived value. Finally, the results verify that eTrust mediates the relationship between consumers’ perceived website quality and behavioral intention of eLoyalty toward an online hotel-booking website; eTrust also mediates the relationship between consumers’ perceived value and behavioral intention of eLoyalty toward an online hotel-booking website. The findings provide both academic researchers and practitioners with a better understanding of customer engagement and facilitate development of more effective customer engagement strategies for online booking platforms.

Numerous studies have explored the influence of Airbnb on the tourism and hospitality industry. However, relatively few studies have focused on customer engagement. Considering its crucial role of boosting customer satisfaction and behavioral intentions (Harrigan, Evers, Miles, & Daly, 2017; So, King, Sparks, & Wang, 2016), there is a great need for research into Airbnb in terms of customer engagement. Therefore, this study aims to investigate customer engagement, satisfaction, and behavioral intentions among Airbnb users. This study recruited a total of 374 US Airbnb users through Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk), which has been increasingly adopted to collect samples in tourism and hospitality studies. Data analysis for structural equation modeling (SEM) was conducted to determine the effects of customer engagement on satisfaction and behavioral intentions of Airbnb users. The results show that customer engagement plays a crucial role in Airbnb user experiences. This study contributes to tourism and hospitality research by applying a customer engagement scale previously developed by So et al. (2016) to examine the relationship between customer engagement and behavioral intention to use Airbnb. In addition to this relationship, satisfaction was included as a mediator to better grasp the importance of customer engagement and the role of satisfaction among U.S. Airbnb users. This research also extends the current literature of Airbnb by examining, through an empirical approach, how customer engagement with Airbnb impacts its users’ behavioral intentions.

Over the past decade, the advances in the Internet of Things has allowed WiFi infrastructure to track the movement and location of smart devices. This innovative technology is sometimes referred to as wireless analytics or offline / in-store visitor analytics. Similar to an offline or instore version of website analytics, wireless analytics can infer instore shopping behavior from analyzing the dwell time, movement, and behavior of a smart device within a designated vicinity. The study was carried out at an activation area of food trucks at an Australian metropolitan university. Visitor analytics were gathered by using a wireless analytic modem that was configured to ping and pick up wireless signal emitted by smart devices within the radius of the food truck area. Challenging past research on pop-stores, our findings show that novelty of pop-up food trucks may not necessarily predict their success and consumers tend to prefer familiar food trucks at the Australian metropolitan university. In fact, the presence of novel food trucks may encourage consumers to walk-by without any interaction with the food trucks.