Exploring a customer engagement spillover effect on social media: the moderating role of customer conscientiousness

Abstract

Purpose

Though prior research has addressed customer engagement (CE) with a focal object (e.g. a brand), the dynamics characterizing customers' engagement with different objects and the potential spillover from a customer's engagement with one object to that with another remains tenuous, exposing an important literature-based gap. The authors, therefore, develop a model proposing the existence of a spillover effect from customers' brand engagement to their engagement with brand-related content and suggest customers' personality trait of conscientiousness to moderate this effect.

Design/methodology/approach

An online survey-based experiment using 380 Danish Facebook users was conducted to test the model.

Findings

The results suggest customers' brand engagement as a significant predictor of their engagement with brand-related content, corroborating the proposed spillover effect. A weaker spillover effect is observed for highly (vs less) conscientious customers, substantiating the moderating role of customer conscientiousness. Moreover, customer conscientiousness is found to interact with brand content-related (i.e. commenting/content creation) task type and brand type (i.e. utilitarian/hedonic) (e.g. more conscientious customers are less likely to engage in brand-related content creation vs. commenting tasks), weakening the spillover effect.

Originality/value

This study extends prior research by quantitatively corroborating an intra-individual CE-based spillover effect from customers' brand engagement to their engagement with brand-related content. The authors also unearth a moderating role of customer conscientiousness, which interacts with brand- and brand content-related task type, on the spillover effect, informing the development of digital marketing strategies.

Citation

Hollebeek, L.D., Kulikovskaja, V., Hubert, M. and Grunert, K.G. (2023), "Exploring a customer engagement spillover effect on social media: the moderating role of customer conscientiousness", Internet Research, Vol. 33 No. 4, pp. 1573-1596. https://doi.org/10.1108/INTR-08-2021-0619