Study On Formation Mechanism Of Customer Engagement Behaviors

With the development of market-oriented economy and information technology,the types and influence of customer behaviors are changing dramatically. Today, thecustomer behaviors include not only purchasing behavior but also word-of-mouth,referral, helping other customers and using social media which are deeply affectingenterprise. The construct “Customer Engagement Behaviors” appeared under thiscircumstance. This construct is defined as the customers’ behavioral manifestatontoward a brand or firm, beyond purchase, resulting from motivatioanal drivers andopens a new research field in marketing discipline. There is little literature aboutcustomer engagement behaviors as it is a new concept. And that is why this thesisfocus on the research of the formation mechanism of customer engagementbehaviors.At the beginning, the existing literature about customer engagement behaviorshas been analyzed and the construct used in this research and its dimensions hasbeen selected. Then, such qualitative research methods as Focus Group, DepthInterview and Grounded Theory has been adopted to interview the customers of cars,financing products, clothes and education training, to analyze the interview recordand to construct the formation mechanism model of customer engagement behaviorsexploratorily. At last, the hypotheses and model have been tested by using StructuralEquations Model method to analyze the data collected from the private carcustomers by questionnaires.As shown by this study, customer satisfaction, customer trust, social need andself-value are the key driving factors to customer engagement behaviors andcustomer trust plays a complete mediatory role between customer satisfaction andcustomer engagement behaviors. In addition, customer age has a moderate influenceon formation mechanism of customer engagement mechanism. Specifically,customer trust has a bigger positive influence on customer engagement behaviors inlow-age group than in high-age group and social need has a bigger positiveinfluence on customer engagement behaviors in high-age group than in low-agegroup. Based on the above conclusion, the significance to customers managementpractice and research shortage have been listed.