Who are you and what do you value? Investigating the role of personality traits and customer-perceived value in online customer engagement

ABSTRACT: While the importance of customer engagement has been widely acknowledged, a gap remains in terms of our understanding of how customers engage with products and services delivered online. Addressing this gap is important given the increasing proportion of time spent interacting with companies online and the key role of customer engagement in delivering an effective customer experience. This paper seeks to address this gap through developing a theoretical framework of online customer engagement (OCE) anchored in 28 semi-structured interviews with members of social media brand communities. This study’s contribution to the customer engagement literature is twofold. First, the study will bring new insights regarding personality traits as an antecedent of OCE and, second, customer-perceived value emerges as a novel consequence of OCE. Understanding what personality traits drive customers to engage online and what value they perceive to receive in this digital age can help managers to better segment and evaluate their customers’ online engagement. Online brand communities can be improved accordingly.