Identifying Causal Customer Engagement Effects Using an Experimental Design

In today’s technology driven, highly dynamic and interactive business environment, the role of ‘customer engagement’ (CE) in co-creating customer experience and value is receiving increasing attention from business practitioners and academics alike. While considerable academic attention has been given to customer experience in general (e.g. Verhoef et al., 2009) and CE (e.g. Van Doorn et al., 2010), there has been a lack of systematic scholarly inquiry into the dynamics characterizing CE and the specific factors driving change in different customers’ CE levels. Our study uses a unique quasi experimental design in a multi-experiment setting, which allows uncovering causal effects of CE and other relational variables, like satisfaction, interaction and involvement. On a general level this study responds to the need for context related investigations in the area of social interactions and social media in marketing. Therefore we introduce a multi-country and multi-industry design. Full paper available at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/289846970_Identifying_Causal_Customer_Engagement_Effects_Using_an_Experimental_Design