Research Information System
IADIS International Journal on WWW/Internet, vol.17, no.1, pp.14-29, 2019 (Peer-Reviewed Journal)
Social commerce is defined as a new wave of e-commerce in which traditional e-commerce is mediated
by social media and social networking services in order to promote online transactions and
shopping-related information exchanges. One of the main application of social commerce is ‘online brand
communities’. Although utilization of social media in order to advance customer brand engagement has
proliferated significantly in recent years, most of the companies have not met the expected level of
engagement of their customers yet. Overall, the key factors that could explain customer engagement are
not yet thoroughly identified. Therefore, the current study develops a conceptual customer engagement
model that aims to explain customer engagement in online brand communities. Customer engagement in
brand 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. As
different dimensions of engagement can be influenced by factors from different aspects, it is important to
cover as many categories as possible. Therefore, the model includes various factor categories including
social, brand related, self-oriented and contend related factors drawn from relevant literature. The research
instrument was designed, and a pilot study was conducted with 75 participants to assure content validity
and to test reliability. This paper contributes to understanding the factors influencing each dimension of
customer engagement to brand communities.