While the importance of customer engagement has been widely acknowledged a gap remains in terms of our understanding of how customers engage with products and services delivered online. Addressing this gap is important given the increasing proportion of time spent interacting with companies online and the key role of customer engagement in delivering an effective customer experience. This paper seeks to address this gap through developing a theoretical framework of online customer engagement anchored in twenty-eight semistructured interviews with members of social media brand communities. This study's contribution to the customer engagement literature is twofold. Firstly, the study will bring new insights regarding personality traits as an antecedent of online customer engagement (OCE) and, secondly, customer-perceived value emerges as a novel consequence of OCE.Understanding what personality traits drive customers to engage online and what value they perceive to receive in this digital age can help managers to better segment and evaluate their customers' online engagement. Online brand communities can be improved accordingly.

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Purpose: As online retailing grows in importance there is increasing interest in the online customer experience. The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of gamification, the use of game mechanics, in enabling consumer engagement with online retailers.Design / Methodology / Approach: The research adopts a qualitative methodology carrying out 16 in-depth interviews with individuals who are frequent online shoppers. Findings:Findings support the importance of including game elements to enhance the retail experience. However, data also suggests that without appropriate management customers can subvert gamification strategies to create their own 'games', increasing competitive pressure between retailers.Practical Implications: The paper suggests ways in which retailers might successfully 'gamify' their online retail stores and reduce incidences of undesirable customer behaviour.Originality / value: This paper provides empirical support to the current paucity of research into the role of gamification in the context of the online retail experience.

Given the indirect role of social media in value creation, the article "Social media:Influencing customer satisfaction in B2B sales" by Agnihotri, Dingus, Hu, and Krush (2016) is notable for highlighting the role of social media as an antecedent to value generation within the sales process. Considering the fast pace at which knowledge of the impact of social media within B2B sales is developing, we critically appraise Agnihotri et al.'s work and position it within the emerging literature on social media communication in the sales process. We conclude with a research agenda identifying a diverse set of new directions for investigating social media within the sales process.

The term ‘big data’ has recently emerged to describe a range of technological and commercial trends enabling the storage and analysis of huge amounts of customer data, such as that generated by social networks and mobile devices. Much of the commercial promise of big data is in the ability to generate valuable insights from collecting new types and volumes of data in ways that were not previously economically viable. At the same time a number of questions have been raised about the implications for individual privacy. This paper explores key perspectives underlying the emergence of big data, and considers both the opportunities andethical challenges raised for market research.