Customer engagement as the moderating variable on brand engagement and firm’s performance in emerging countries

Abstract

Brand engagement is not a new term or idea for practitioners to emphasize on developing meaningful relationship with consumers. The main purpose of this paper is to examine and conceptually develop the brand engagement model, in order to investigate customer engagement as the variable that moderates the degree of brand engagement. The paper reviews the brand orientation that firms need to start as the fundamental idea when developing brand engagement. The paper also discusses the skepticism construct of customer engagement that some researchers viewed it as the same meaning as brand engagement, describes more about the elements of customer engagement, and finally explains how both customer and brand engagement can effect firm’s performance. Furthermore, this paper proposes the research propositions and provides consumer insights on how they can engage themselves with brands, especially in emerging countries. The reason that this study has to be specific to those consumers in emerging countries, is due to the invasion of global firms that enter in those countries, in order to steal the sales from local producers. To overcome this issue, this research paper will provide the guidance for them in strategizing effective brand engagement and enlighten as well as encourage the consumers to endorse more local brands.