Consumer-brand engagement on social media is a widely studied research topic with high relevance for marketing practitioners. However, the discipline is affected by a conceptual divergence and limited understanding of applicable research methods. The purpose of this article is to review the extant empirical research in the marketing literature that investigates consumer engagement with brands on social media, provide an overview of the research methods employed, and suggest implications for future research. Through systematic review of 66 published studies, this article aims to explore what methods are used to empirically investigate consumer engagement with brands on social media and asks how these methods have evolved over time. The study categorises the current research and demonstrates the evolution of research methods and themes from 2011 until 2019. This literature review revealed three observations: (a) low methods’ diversity, (b) dominant reliance on visible social media metrics and (c) negative aspects of consumer brand engagement as an emerging theme. The insights developed and the observed trends can be helpful in shaping future research and practice in the field of consumer brand engagement.

The aim of this article is to introduce a methodological framework for the systematic capture and analysis of consumer lurking practices in digital environments.Despite the prevalence of lurking practices in digital environments, it is an understudied topic in marketing and consumer research due to methodological constraints. To remedy this, we introduce Digital Practices Tracing (DPT), a novel methodological framework that integrates digital methods and post-phenomenological inquiry. Specifically, the proposed methodology enables the capture of lurking practices as they occur naturally by using tracking devices and uncovering underlying motivations via follow-up interviews. The contribution of the article is threefold. First, it provides a very detailed research protocol (articulated in six sequential steps) to implement the DPT framework. Second, by illustrating the value of this methodology with a pilot study on lurking practices, it puts forth an ad hoc taxonomy of digital lurking practices (See, Search, and Save) as they occur in real time in their natural environmentsmaking them de facto visible. Third, it demonstrates how the DPT framework can be applied to the study of a wide range of consumer digital practices that go beyond lurking.