Understanding customer brand engagement through service environment: a multilevel analysis

Customer brand engagement (CBE) is acknowledged as a top research priority, although little remains known concerning the interface of CBE and individual/organizational variables, thus, examined in this study. Replying this gap, ground on relationship-marketing-theory and social-exchange-theory, this study develops and tests a proposed research-framework of organizational-based factors (i.e. service-environment) as well as individual-led factors (i.e. CBE) towards hospitality service brands. We also examine moderating interaction effect of brand-reputation in proposed model. To test our model, data of hotel respondents was gathered by adopting confirmatory-factor-analysis and hierarchical-linear-modeling, which considers organizational- and individual-based factors. The study verified that service-environment and customer-brand-experience have positive effects on customer brand engagement. It is discovered that CBE enhances brand-relationship-quality along with brand equity. Findings substantiated CBE's mediation effect amongst modeled links. Results also corroborated brand-reputation's interaction/cross-level effect between the proposed factors. This article offers important implications for both theory and practice.