Customer engagement in a Big Data world

Purpose This paper aims to propose that the literature on customer engagement has emphasized the benefits of customer engagement to the firm and, to a large extent, ignored the customers’ perspective. By drawing upon co-creation and other literature, this paper attempts to alleviate this gap by proposing a strategic framework that aligns both the customer and firm perspectives in successfully creating engagement that generates value for both the customer and the bottom line. Design/methodology/approach A strategic framework is proposed that includes the necessary firm resources, data, process, timeline and goals for engagement, and captures customers’ motives, situational factors and preferred engagement styles. Findings The authors argue that sustainability of data-driven customer engagement requires a dynamic and iterative value generation process involving customers recognizing the value of engagement behaviours and firm’s ability to capture and passing value back to customers. Originality/value This paper proposes a dynamic strategic value-creation framework that comprehensively captures both the customer and firm perspectives to data-driven customer engagement.