Determining the Factors and Evolutionary Trends of Customer Engagement in Businesses: A Bibliometric Analysis

Over the recent years, the concept of customer engagement has emerged as a focal point in marketing research. Despite the increasing interest in this concept, there is a lack of a comprehensive body of research in this area. Additionally, existing research in this field has focused on small segments rather than taking a holistic view of customer engagement literature. Furthermore, different theoretical perspectives have led to a fragmented theory. In light of this gap, the present study aims to delineate the evolutionary trajectory of customer engagement literature and outline the knowledge structure of the field, providing a comprehensive perspective.

The type of research in this study is qualitative in terms of data nature, applied in terms of purpose, and bibliometric in terms of data collection. The bibliometric method, as a practical application of mathematical and statistical methods, serves to identify the intellectual trajectories of scholars within a field. It also illuminates the structures and underlying framework of knowledge, highlighting their interrelationships. This approach offers an unbiased perspective for researchers. All analyses were conducted using R programming languages. The algorithms employed included thematic analysis, correspondence analysis, clustering algorithms, and co-occurrence analysis of words.

The study identified the most influential authors and journals within the period spanning 2009 to 2022. The most active and influential author in this field is Ms. Hollubeek. Additionally, the journal "Business Research" with a frequency of 41 has the highest number of published articles. The majority of publications are attributed to the United States, Australia, and China. The most frequently occurring words related to customer engagement are customer satisfaction, behavior, impact, and scale development metrics. Furthermore, the results indicate that the majority of research in the field of customer engagement focuses on social media marketing and brand loyalty. Additionally, based on co-occurrence analysis, three clusters of words related to the concepts of engagement and its metrics in social networks, preconditions for customer engagement, recommendation marketing, and the effects of social networks on customer behavior were extracted. This study also provides a comprehensive insight into marketing and brand managers by identifying the main themes of customer engagement. Moreover, the direction and trends of customer engagement shed light on a range of strategic opportunities that can be used by brand managers as a competitive advantage.

Based on the results of the histogram mapping, three main pathways of scholars in this field were elucidated. The first one focuses on the customer-centric approach for organizations. From this perspective, organizations should delegate some control to the customer and provide them with incentives, effectively making the customer the marketer of the company. The second pathway has reached its peak with the emergence of social networks and interactions between organization-customer and customer-customer. A wide range of research in the areas of brand community, engagement metrics, and engagement drivers, including content type, customer attitude, industry, and behavior, are encompassed in this pathway. The last one is service dominance. Based on this, engagement is defined as the interaction and creative experiences of the customer with the brand. This pathway is rapidly evolving from a micro to macro perspective and new research is likely to focus on all actors in a service eco-system.