THE PROCESS OF CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT: A CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK

Traditional measures of customer satisfaction have been criticized for failing to capture the depth of customer responses to service performance. This study seeks to redirect satisfaction research toward an approach that encompasses an understanding of the role of commitment, involvement, and trust in the creation of engaged and loyal customers. A conceptual framework for segmenting customer-brand relationships based on the extent to which customers are either new or repeat purchase customers of a specific service brand is proposed. The approach provides a deeper and more complete understanding of the nature of customer-brand relationships and the processes by which engagement may be developed and fostered among differing customer segments.