Antecedents And Outcomes Of Customer Engagement Behavior In The Airline Brand Fan Pages

• Main Author: Chuah, Hui Wen
• Format: Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: 2019
• Subjects: HD28-70 Management. Industrial Management
• Online Access: http://eprints.usm.my/48538/

The dynamic, ubiquitous, and real-time interaction enabled by social media has revolutionized marketing practices and consumer behavior; offering new ways to gather and share information and most importantly, opening new engagement and collaboration possibilities. Although the possibilities provided by social media seem to be endless, companies often find it challenging to leverage these opportunities to engage with customers and influence their behaviors. To fully exploit the capabilities of social media and the associated benefits, understanding what stimulates customer engagement behavior is imperative. To this end, this study develops a theoretical framework to elucidate the antecedents and outcomes of customer engagement behavior in the airline brand fan pages (BFPs), grounded in various theoretical premises and literatures. The model was assessed using partial least squares-structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) with a sample of 368 fans of the Malaysian airline Facebook pages. Four key findings are derived. First, customers’ prior gratifications of BFP uses and brand perceptions complement and interact with each other in shaping customers’ prior engagement with the BFPs. In other words, prior brand perceptions moderate this relationship. Second, customers’ engagement with the BFPs prior to the exposure to corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities carries over to influence their (future) engagement behavior. Third, perceived CSR-brand fit acts as a ‘stimulus’ for customer engagement behavior and self-brand integration is the underlying psychological mechanism (mediator) that facilitates this process.