Customer Engagement in Social Media. Understanding the Antecedents and Consequences

      Аннотация: Traditionally, companies used to establish relationships with customers through marketing activities like reward programs and direct marketing. Today, customers are participating as co-creators and sharers of brand content pages, which allowing viral effects and creating opportunities for word-of-mouth promotion.In this book on “Customer Engagement in Social Media” we have developed a conceptual model to show the linkages between the constructs of customer engagement through social media and stages of consumers’ decision-making process.Consumers can connect with the firm either directly through social media channels or indirectly if a website link is advertised to consumers in traditional media channels . The process of customer engagement in social media is categorized in seven sub-processes as learning, socializing, sharing, co-creating, advocating, criticizing and reviling shown by the consumers in social media. These seven sub-processes positively impact perceived risk, brand attitude and purchase behavior of consumers. Web care interventions taken by the firm are very important to deal with the dissatisfied consumer and build consumer loyalty.

Ключевые слова: brand attitude, Brand Communities, customer engagement, perceived risk, Post-Purchase Behaviour, social media.