Examination of Empirical Studies on Customer Engagement, Online Engagement, and Social Media Engagement

Introduction

The change in information and communication technologies, the intensification of competition, the rapid spread of the internet, and the new order that emerged with these changes and developments, led to the emergence of great differences especially in the marketing practices and strategies of businesses. The fact that technology is the focus of all activities has triggered the rapid transformation of the marketing sector, entering a new period and the emergence of new approaches in marketing. In addition to this change in marketing, there have been differences in the behavior and habits of consumers, and new preferences and expectations have emerged. Changing consumer and customer behaviors and marketing approaches have led to the emergence of new concepts in marketing, and some concepts to be handled differently with developing technology. One of these concepts is customer or consumer engagement. Because all activities of consumers such as purchasing a product, participating in an activity, collecting information, comparing products, commenting on products, repurchasing, sharing their experiences with others have changed. The main reason for this is the rapid development of technology and the world's effort to keep up with technology. As the technology changes consumer behavior, new factors related to customer engagement have begun to be taken into consideration.

When the literature is examined, it is seen that the concepts of customer engagement, consumer engagement, brand engagement, media engagement, advertising engagement are discussed, and the concept of customer and consumer engagement is used the most. Today, online consumers and social media engagement have been added to the engagement literature, with consumers beginning to use the internet for shopping. Along with these concepts, the traditional concept of engagement has been differentiated, businesses have had the opportunity to get closer to a much wider audience, and concepts have emerged that can instantly measure the behavior and responses of consumers, based on the establishment of a reciprocal, interactive connection and communication with consumers.

Customer engagement behaviors go beyond transactions, and may be specifically defined as a customer’s behavioral manifestations that have a brand or firm focus, beyond purchase, resulting from motivational drivers (Van Doorn, et al. 2010). Customer engagement is a component of relationship marketing, which is applicable to both offensive and defensive marketing strategies, aimed at attracting, building, maintaining, and enhancing relationships with potential and existing customers (Vivek, Beatty & Morgan, 2012). In the same study, in which customer engagement is theoretically examined, it is determined that the basic components of customer engagement are participation and involvement for both current and potential customers, as well as value, trust, affective commitment, word of mouth, loyalty and brand community involvement are potential results of customer engagement. Van Doorn et al. (2010), in his study that theoretically examines customer engagement, it was examined between the businesses antecedents (customer-based, firm-based and context-based) and consequences. However, it was emphasized that word-of-mouth (WOM) activity, recommendations, helping other customers, blogging, writing reviews, and even engaging in legal actions are the basic behaviors of customer engagement.

The rapid change of the internet and changes in the consumer caused the concept of customer engagement to change. As a result of using the concept of engagement with the internet, it has revealed the concept of online engagement. On online platforms, this form of engagement is commonly referred to as online engagement and is addressed from the perspective of measuring undertaken actions, such as the click-through rates (CTR), page views, etc., with different measures being applied depending on the possibilities offered by the platform (Cvijikj & Michahelles, 2013). Online engagement can be regarded as a psychological state of users characterized by interactive, cocreative user experiences with a focal agent and object. Calder, Malthouse & Schaedel (2009), who examined customer engagement for a website, developed 2 types of online engagement according to the results of this study. The first is personal engagement, and the second is social-interactive engagement. It was determined that social interactive engagement controls personal engagement and later affects advertisements.