Customer Engagement in a Big Data World

Prior literature on customer engagement has emphasized the benefits of customer engagement to the firm and mostly ignored the customers’ perspective. In contrast, we argue that sustainability of data-driven customer engagement require a dynamic and iterative value generation process involving 1) customers recognizing the value of engagement behaviors and 2) firm’s ability to capture and pass value back to customers. We propose a dynamic strategic value creation framework that comprehensively aligns both the customer and firm perspectives in successfully creating engagement that generates value for both the customer and the bottom line. Our framework includes necessary firm resources, data, processes, timeline and goals for engagement, and captures customers’ motives, situational factors, and preferred engagement styles.