ACHIEVING CUSTOMER BRAND ENGAGEMENT THROUGH BRAND COMMUNITIES

Abstract

Brands are the necessary source of identification and differentiation of firm’s products from competitors but mere creation of brands is not sufficient in the age of competition. Making brands stronger is how brand management is redefined and there comes the role of customer engagement with the brands. ‘Customer brand engagement’ reflects the customers’ total investment or their cognitive, emotional, and behavioural activity in the interactions with the brand that goes beyond traditional purchases and transactions. Since its inception the research on engagement has made a significant progress and management found it an influential tool to manage customers; today it has achieved a feat such that the customer engagement marketing is poised to replace traditional relationship marketing aimed at repeated transactions. Customer brand engagement is contingent on customer-brand interactions which makes the role of engagement inside brand communities of great importance. This is because the brand communities act as unique platforms for multiple direct or indirect customer-brand interactions. The brand communities hold a special place in offering brand relationships a broader meaning as the members not only interact with the brands but other users of the same brand. Despite a significant growth in the number of studies on customer brand engagement, the concept has still remained in its infancy and the scope for further exploration has been reiterated time and again. The limited number of empirical studies, insufficiency of brand engagement drivers and consequences, absence of contextual focus in its exploration constitute some of the crucial gaps in academic research that require further research attention. Engagement of customers inside brand communities remains underexplored and important as it brings favourable brand based outcomes. The promising role of brand psychological ownership and brand value-congruity in stimulating brand engagement has also remains in its embryonic stages of research. The blurred link between brand engagement and brand attachment and shortage of studies covering brand loyalty as an outcome of brand engagement constitute the specific gaps covered in this research work. To address these gaps in the literature, this study proposes a conceptual model depicting brand engagement drivers and consequences. Grounded in psychological ownership theory and value-congruity theory, brand psychological ownership and brand value-congruity, respectively, have been proposed as the drivers of customer brand engagement in the context of brand communities. There is evidence in existing literature that brand psychological ownership and the value-congruity can impact consumers’ relationships with the brands. The proposed model portrays brand attachment and behavioural brand loyalty as the outcomes of customer iii brand engagement as well. Following the descriptive, cross sectional research design, the conceptual model is empirically tested with the data collected from 312 members of brand communities through self-administered survey questionnaire. The data was analyzed with the help of multivariate analysis techniques, viz., confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modelling. The findings of this study confirmed the positive effect of brand psychological ownership on customer brand engagement. The results also supported that value-congruity with reference to the brand positively influences customer brand engagement. Additionally, it was found that customer brand engagement affects customers’ attachment with the brands and behavioral brand loyalty positively. Overall, the empirical support was obtained for all the proposed structural relationships, thereby supporting the validity of the proposed model. This study contributes to the theory and practice in certain ways. From an academic standpoint, this study provides support for the application of psychological ownership theory and value-congruity theory in ‘customer engagement in the context of brand communities’, an area that remained largely obscure of the application of different marketing theories. Psychological ownership towards brands has been covered in a handful of studies and this study adds in that direction by conceptualizing the role of brand psychological ownership in stimulating customer brand engagement. Similarly, this study extends the reach of congruity theory in influencing brand engagement from the perspective of values, i.e., value-congruity with reference to the brand. Apart from this, the study helps in elucidating on the debated ties between brand engagement and brand attachment in existing literature. Lastly, the support for creating brand based loyalty from brand engagement is also offered through this study. From practical standpoint, the brand managers and brand community managers can benefit from the findings of this study in the direction of engagement of customers with their brands through brand communities. To engage customers with the brands, managers should try to instill a sense of brand psychological ownership towards the focal brands inside their communities. The managers should focus on creating a sense of value-congruity with regard to the brand inside brand communities by identifying the human-values of the target segment. This study can prove beneficial for the managers in a sense that they can achieve the crucial objectives of having emotionally connected and loyal customers through customer brand engagement. Managers are therefore advised to create brand communities to engage customers with the brands and reap the benefits of having strongly connected and loyal customers that will help them in making the brands stronger.