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In the last three decades an influential research stream has emerged, which highlights the dynamics of focal consumer/brand relationships. Specifically, more recently the 'consumer brand engagement' (CBE) concept has been postulated to more comprehensively reflect the nature of consumers' particular interactive brand relationships, relative to traditional concepts, including 'involvement.' However, despite the growing scholarly interest regarding the undertaking of marketing research addressing 'engagement,' studies have been predominantly exploratory in nature; thus generating a lack of empirical research in this area to date. By developing and validating a CBE scale in specific social media settings, we address this identified literature gap.Specifically, we conceptualize CBE as a consumer's positively valenced brand-related cognitive, emotional and behavioral activity during or related to focal consumer/brand interactions. We derive three CBE dimensions, including cognitive processing, affection, and activation. Within three different social media contexts, we employ exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses to develop a reliable, 10-item CBE scale, which we proceed to validate within a nomological net of conceptual relationships and a rival model. The findings suggest that while consumer brand 'involvement' acts as a CBE antecedent, consumer 'self-brand connection' and 'brand usage intent' represent key CBE consequences; thus providing a platform for further research in this emerging area. We conclude with an overview of key managerial and scholarly implications arising from this research.Keywords: Consumer brand engagement, social media, scale development, structural equation modeling 2 IntroductionIn the last three decades a powerful research stream has emerged, which highlights the nature and dynamics pertaining to specific consumer/brand relationships (Fournier 1998;Aaker, Fournier and Brasel 2004). Within this emerging body of work, consumer brand 'involvement,' which reflects a consumer's level of interest in, and personal relevance of a brand, has gained significant attention (Zaichkowsky 1985(Zaichkowsky , 1994Coulter et al. 2003). However, despite the important insights gleaned from 'involvement' research, more recently scholarly emphasis is shifting to concepts and theoretical perspectives, which explain or predict the dynamics characterizing focal interactive consumer/brand relationships more explicitly, including in specific social media settings Third, we offer a more parsimonious 10-item measurement tool comprising three CBE dimensions, relative to Calder et al.'s proposed eight-dimensional view of OE comprising 37 items.

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In today’s highly dynamic and interactive business environment, the role of “customer engagement” (CE) in cocreating customer experience and value is receiving increasing attention from business practitioners and academics alike. Despite this interest, systematic scholarly inquiry into the concept and its conceptual distinctiveness from other, associated relational concepts has been limited to date. This article explores the theoretical foundations of CE by drawing on relationship marketing theory and the service-dominant (S-D) logic. The analysis also examines the use of the term “engagement” in the social science, management, and marketing academic literatures, as well as in specific business practice applications. Five fundamental propositions (FPs) derived from this analysis are used to develop a general definition of CE, and distinguish the concept from other relational concepts, including “participation” and “involvement.” The five propositions are used in the development of a framework for future research, the undertaking of which would facilitate the subsequent refinement of the conceptual domain of CE. Overall, CE, based on its relational foundations of interactive experience and the cocreation of value, is shown to represent an important concept for research in marketing and service management.

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Purpose – After gaining traction in business practice the “brand engagement” (BE) concept has transpired in the academic marketing/branding literature. BE has been defined as the level of a consumer's “cognitive, emotional and behavioral investment in specific brand interactions”. Although pioneering research provides exploratory insights, the majority of literature to-date addresses consumers' specific positively-valenced BE; thus largely overlooking potential negatively-valenced manifestations of this emerging concept and their ensuing implications. The purpose of this paper is to propose a novel BE conceptualization that extends to cover focal negatively-valenced, in addition to positively-valenced BE expressions, thus providing a more comprehensive theoretical model of BE. Specifically, while positively-valenced BE addresses consumers' favorable/affirmative cognitive, emotional and behavioral brand-related dynamics during focal brand interactions (e.g. brand-usage); negatively-valenced BE, by contrast, is exhibited through consumers' unfavorable brand-related thoughts, feelings, and behaviors during brand interactions. Design/methodology/approach – Drawing on netnographic methodology, the authors develop a conceptual model addressing the key characteristics of consumers' positively-/negatively-valenced BE, and derive a set of key BE triggers and consequences. Findings – Based on their analyses the authors develop a conceptual model, which addresses consumers' positively/negatively valenced BE, and key antecedents and consequences. Research limitations/implications – Future research is required, which tests and validates the proposed model for specific categories and brands using large-scale, quantitative analyses. Practical implications – Generating enhanced managerial understanding of positively/negatively valenced BE, this research contributes to guiding managerial decision making regarding the management of specific brands. Originality/value – By proposing a conceptual model incorporating positively-/negatively-valenced BE, this paper extends current insights in the branding/marketing literatures, thus contributing to managers and scholars.