Consumer-brand engagement: toward a comprehensive theoretical framework

Consumer-brand engagement (CBE) is a recent concept in the marketing literature expanding the domain of relationship marketing. The concept of CBE has become increasingly important in the academic and managerial marketing debate over the last years, as Brodie et al. (2011) and Gambetti and Graffigna (2010) pointed out, being recently recognized as a central marketing issue by the Marketing Science Institute (2010). CBE has been seen by academics as a fundamental driver of both consumer decision-making process and brand equity, being considered by marketers as a priority in branding strategies. In the current academic marketing debate there is a clear intention toward the development of a unitary definition of the CBE concept. Extant studies made a great effort in defining the key dimensions which play a role in the development of CBE as well as the main drivers of this construct. However, authoritative scholars interested in defining and measuring CBE focused so far on this concept as a static state of mind of an individual that can be circumscribed to an affinity-based oneto- one relationship form between brand and consumer. Only a few scholars put forth the idea that CBE is a process-based phenomenon, acting as an overarching construct that has a dynamic nature and that includes and organizes other dimensions of the consumption experience. In this regard, we believe that in order to attempt a realistic definition of CBE, it is necessary to found the construct on the basis of a context-driven, inductive, field research approach. Hence, our study develops a Grounded Theory methodological approach pursuing an inductive point of view rooted in the field and firmly anchored in data that investigates consumers’ and practitioners’ experience of CBE. Our aim is to draft a first ecological foundation of the CBE construct.