IDENTIFICATION OF THE FACTORS AFFECTING CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT IN ONLINE BRAND COMMUNITIES: A PILOT STUDY

Social commerce is defined as a new wave of e-commerce in which traditional e-commerce is mediatedby social media and social networking services in order to promote online transactions andshopping-related information exchanges. One of the main application of social commerce is ‘online brandcommunities’. Although utilization of social media in order to advance customer brand engagement hasproliferated significantly in recent years, most of the companies have not met the expected level ofengagement of their customers yet. Overall, the key factors that could explain customer engagement arenot yet thoroughly identified. Therefore, the current study develops a conceptual customer engagementmodel that aims to explain customer engagement in online brand communities. Customer engagement inbrand social media is related to interactions and communications with the brand and other customers.In this study, the antecedents and outcomes of customer engagement dimensions will be investigated. Asdifferent dimensions of engagement can be influenced by factors from different aspects, it is important tocover as many categories as possible. Therefore, the model includes various factor categories includingsocial, brand related, self-oriented and contend related factors drawn from relevant literature. The researchinstrument was designed, and a pilot study was conducted with 75 participants to assure content validityand to test reliability. This paper contributes to understanding the factors influencing each dimension ofcustomer engagement to brand communities