Customer Engagement within Multiple New Media and Broader Business Ecosystem - a Holistic Perspective

Abstract

Purpose-Customer engagement (customers’ behavioral manifestations going beyond customer-firm purchase transactions) has been regarded as strategic imperatives for generating enhanced corporate performance. The plethora of new media has provided customers with different options to interact with firms and other customers. However, the primacy of value-laden interactive customer relationships and value co-creation raises challenges for firms and customers, especially in the context of broader business ecosystems such as brand partnership for extending value co-creation. This study explores how customer engagement with well-designed choreograph of various new media’s channels can increase the value co-creation extent in the context of broader business ecosystems, resulting in higher levels service offerings, experiences and innovation. Design/methodology/approach-This exploratory study presents a new framework of customer engagement that holistically integrates the elements of multiple new media and broader business ecosystem, stimulating a virtuous circle of realizing customer engagement toward superior results or innovations. The framework considers new media’s different information service and technologies (e.g., search engine, social recommender, social media) that can be properly choreographed to achieve a virtuous customer engagement circle. Findings-This paper uses an exemplar framework`s instantiation - an ICT-enabled engagement platform (called iEngagement) - that can demonstrate how to empower the central companies together with their eco-stakeholders to holistically perform customer engagement utilizing new media toward fruitful customer engagement. Originality/value-This exploratory study is amongst the first that addresses the theory and practice of customer engagement within multiple new media and broader business ecosystem. This paper presents a customer engagement framework and an exemplified engagement platform that holistically integrate the elements of multiple new media and broader business ecosystem, for stimulating a virtuous circle of realizing customer engagement toward superior results or innovations.