Achieving retail website customer engagement

Demangeot, Catherine and Broderick, Amanda J. and Greenley, Gordon E. (2008) Achieving retail website customer engagement. In: European Marketing Academy (EMAC) 37th Conference, 2008-05-27 - 2008-05-30.

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Abstract

This paper proposes a conceptualization of retail website customer engagement. It then empirically tests relationships between the constructs making up the phenomenon of customer engagement (intimacy, involvement, interaction, intention to revisit) and its three drivers (experiential exploration, informational exploration, sense-making potential). We define customer engagement as the intensity of a customer's proactiveness towards a retail website during a navigation. The conceptual model distinguishes between the antecedent role of customer engagement's organismic components (involvement and intimacy) and the subsequent role of its behavioral components (interaction and intention to revisit). It brings together relationship marketing and marketing communication perspectives into a single model. Psychometrically sound measures of the four constructs of customer engagement and its drivers are developed and validated. Structural equation modeling results provide support to all hypothesized relationships. The findings show the connection between the relational constructs of intimacy and intention to revisit, and between the communication constructs of involvement and interaction. Further, experiential exploration and informational exploration both activate customer engagement, but through different routes: experiential exploration activates the communication route more while informational exploration activates the relational route more.