Exploring customer engagement in the product vs. service context

Though customer engagement (CE) is heralded as a strategic organizational imperative, empirically derived insight into its nomological network remains sparse. Extending existing research, we therefore test service-dominant logic-informed CE vis-à-vis its key antecedents of knowledge sharing and learning, and its consequences of customer cocreation and relationship quality. We also envisage the existence of CE-based differences across physical goods (versus service) contexts, leading us to include the nature of the offering (good vs. service) as a moderating factor in our model, making a novel contribution. To test the model, a survey was conducted in the tangible sports goods (i.e., sports retail) and -service (i.e., sports club) contexts. The findings substantiate a positive effect of customer learning and knowledge sharing on CE, thus empirically validating conceptual literature-based claims. In addition, CE was found to exert a favorable effect on customer cocreation and relationship quality. Moreover, the results confirm our hypothesized moderating effect by revealing the framework’s stronger associations for service- (vs. product-based) CE. We conclude by discussing key implications that arise from our analyses.