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This three-wave longitudinal study explored the relation between discrimination-related stress and behavioral engagement among urban African-American and Latino adolescents, and the moderating effect of school-based social support.

A sample of 270 African-American and Hispanic/Latino adolescents attending urban public high schools completed three annual surveys starting with 10th grade.

Growth curve analysis revealed that discrimination-related stress was associated with decreased behavioral engagement over time.

School-based social support moderated this effect in that discrimination-related stress had less of an impact on behavioral engagement as level of school-based social support increased.

School-based supportive relationships serve as a protective factor for urban African-American and Latino youth, helping them remain engaged in school as they deal with the negative effects of discrimination-related stress.

The findings reveal that the development of positive, supportive relationships in school seems to be a malleable variable that interventionists and educational advocates can focus on in an effort to bolster academic achievement among academically stigmatized youth.

This study aims to propose a novel mirroring digital content marketing (MDCM) framework that extends the current consumer-based digital content marketing (DCM) framework to encompass the provider’s perspective. Relying on the stimulus–organism–response theory, the authors posit that content stimuli influence behavioural engagement responses that, respectively, mirror the motives and self-reported engagement from the consumer-based DCM.

To empirically verify the provider side of the MDCM framework, the authors used one newsletter and one matching website with corresponding 117 weekly data points. Data were drawn from three sources for six countries: newsletter content stimuli, newsletter performance indicators and Google Analytics metrics on matching website performance. OLS and panel regressions were used to analyse the data and generate results.

The results show that content stimuli do explain the behavioural engagement responses of consumers recorded by the provider. However, the effects of the different stimuli are inconsistent: functional stimuli have both positive and negative effects, while social stimuli positively impact the behavioural engagement response. The authors further show that the newsletter engagement response influences subsequent engagement responses across channels (e.g. via the linked news media website).

Further research definitely needs to empirically verify the connection between two sides of the MDCM framework. As proposed by authors, provider-based stimuli are corresponding to the consumer-based motivations, however, which stimuli are triggering which motivations and how they can consequently be translated to both consumer- and provider-based behavioural engagement is still an open question. Different theoretical lenses could be taken in the usage of MDCM framework.

Our observations are relevant for marketers that want to use certain stimuli in their digital content, in particular a content introduced in the newsletter and the website. The authors show that stimuli are indeed related to the behavioural engagement response of consumers and that various stimuli impact engagement differently. Furthermore, the recommendations for the marketing managers of news media are to use priming across the platforms in their Web communication strategies.

This study proposes and empirically tests the provider side of the MDCM framework across two news media channels, focusing on behavioural engagement responses.

Despite wide acknowledgment in research of the benefits of customer engagement to firms, the customer engagement process and how it leads to positive marketing outcomes remains underexplored. Extending existing research, this paper aims to develop and test a conceptual model that outlines the effect of passive and active customer behavioral engagement on customer loyalty and the role of customer involvement in the process, as both an antecedent and a moderator.

Data collected from 362 millennials in Johannesburg, South Africa through a scenario-based experiment was submitted to a partial least square structural equation modeling and moderated-mediation analyses after examining the manipulation effectiveness of the experimental scenarios. The unit of analyses is hotel patrons.

The findings include customer involvement is a significant predictor of passive and active customer behavioral engagement both of which consequently influence customer loyalty; customer involvement moderates the effect of passive engagement on active engagement; and not only is passive engagement indirectly related to customer loyalty through active engagement, the indirect relationship is the strongest at the highest level of customer involvement.

The current study provides notable insights into the relationship between customer involvement, customer behavioral engagement and customer loyalty. However, there is need for further studies to validate our model across different brand categories and different social media platforms as well as in offline settings with a more diverse sample because the scope of this study is limited to millennials that use Facebook brand communities.

This study contributes to the customer engagement literature by rationalizing and demonstrating the importance of customer involvement as a precursor of the behavioral engagement process (comprising the passive and the active components) and loyalty among hotel patrons.

Brands are investing heavily in content marketing within digital communication channels, yet there is limited understanding of the effectiveness of this content on consumer engagement. This paper aims to examine how consumer engagement with branded content is created through consumer-initiated online brand communities (OBCs) and brand-initiated digital content marketing (DCM) communications. Self-brand connections are examined as an important antecedent to the cognitive, affective, behavioural and social dimensions of consumer engagement and the subsequent impact of engagement on loyalty is explored across these two channels.

A survey approach was used with two consumer samples for one focal retail brand, namely, a consumer-initiated OBC (Facebook) and email subscribers of the retail brand’s DCM communications. A multi-group analysis of structural invariance procedure was used to comparatively examine the formation of engagement for consumers within the OBC and DCM channels.

This study demonstrates the different ways in which engagement forms across different digital communication channels. Self-brand connection (SBC) was found to strongly drive behavioural, cognitive, affective and social engagement. The cognitive, affective and behavioural engagement was found to mediate the self-brand connection and consumer loyalty relationship. Overall, this relationship was most strongly and significantly mediated by affective and cognitive engagement within the OBC channel when compared to the DCM channel.

The findings of this study should be interpreted with several limitations in mind. First, the research was conducted within the confines of one OBC, within one social networking site platform characterised by self-selected membership based on a passion and immersion with the brand. This means that consumers within the OBC were highly connected to one another and the retail brand and highly socialised in-group norms and mores. This type and intensity of connection may not be the case for all forms of OBCs. Second, this study was limited to one retail brand, from one brand category. Future research should examine OBCs across a range of utilitarian and hedonic brands to comprehensively contextualise the dimensions of engagement. Third, the data for this study was cross-sectional. The use of netnographic analysis and qualitative interviews across a range of OBCs would support the triangulation of the findings of this research, especially with regard to the narrative that consumers’ express when discussing how their SBC manifests through the dimensions of engagement. Fourth, this study explored a single antecedent of engagement, namely, self-brand connections. Future research may consider how SBC operates in conjunction with other complementary factors to enhance consumers’ affective, cognitive, social and behavioural engagement such as brand awareness, satisfaction and participation/interactivity. In addition, future research could examine an expanded array of engagement outcomes such as purchase intention, the share of wallet and reputation. Finally, future research should examine the operationalisation and validation of the dimensions of engagement using multiple competing scales to assess the suitability of these engagement scales across multiple brand categories and contexts.

Given the increasing investment in branding within social media and the fragmentation of brand communications across multiple communications platforms, the management of effective brand communications remains a significant challenge. This study found that the relationship between self-brand connections, affective, social, behavioural and cognitive engagement and loyalty was context-specific and moderated by a digital communication channel (OBC vs DCM email marketing), thus providing insights as to the effectiveness of OBCs and DCMs as two tools for enhancing consumer loyalty.

This study makes a novel contribution to the engagement literature by examining the antecedent role of self-brand connections in predicting consumers’ engagement; the moderating role of digital communication platforms (OBC vs DCM) on the formation of cognitive, affective, behavioural and social engagement; and the mediating effect of these dimensions on loyalty.

The metaverse enables users to create their own avatars in a shared virtual space, giving rise to a new avatar personality that differs from their real-self personality. The aim of this research is to explore how users' real-self and avatar personalities may affect their behavioral engagement and satisfaction in the metaverse context.

This research applies self-discrepancy theory to investigate how the big five traits of both real-self and avatar personalities influence users' engagement and satisfaction in the metaverse. The present research employed a mixed-methods approach, beginning with a qualitative study to identify prevalent personality cues among users on metaverse social media platforms. Subsequently, a quantitative study was conducted to further validate the findings of the qualitative study.

The results indicated that avatar personality scored higher than the real-self personality in the dimensions of openness, conscientiousness and extraversion, while scored lower in the dimensions of agreeableness and neuroticism. Both real-self and avatar personality traits positively influenced metaverse satisfaction via behavioral engagement in the metaverse. Notably, avatar personality traits had a stronger impact on behavioral engagement compared to real-self personality traits, which further influence metaverse satisfaction.

The present study offers practical insights for metaverse developers and managers to enhance user satisfaction by focusing on users’ big five traits of both real-self and avatar personality. It suggests implementing personalized tools, organizing personality-based social activities and other initiatives to encourage user’s behavioral engagement and ultimately enhance metaverse satisfaction.

Unlike existing research that concentrates on a single facet of personality traits, this research employs a mixed-methods approach to conceptualize users' real-self personality and avatar personality, further exploring their impacts on metaverse satisfaction.

This paper aims to explore the concept of “actor engagement” within the context of the sharing economy, a novel and dynamic business model. Specifically, it investigates the formation of actor engagement and its relationship with value creation within this business model.

Drawing on Storbacka et al. (2016)actor engagement framework and service-dominant logic service ecosystem model, unstructured data (text and images) from the Airbnb platform in seven countries and text- and image-mining techniques such as machine learning are used to measure the research variables and test the model by PLS-SEM.

The results indicate that affective engagement has a more significant impact on behavioural engagement than cognitive engagement for multidimensional actor engagement. Service providers’ engagement – directly, and through customer engagement – influences value creation for service providers (i.e. performance). Moreover, national-level moderator (i.e. economic, competitiveness, technology, social and political factors) plays a significant moderating role in our model.

This study encourages future research to explore how actor engagement leads to value creation for all actors on the different sharing economy platforms.

The findings provide practical insights for service providers to engage their customers and platform managers, especially in an international context, on managing their relationships with both customers and service providers in different countries.

This study advances the current literature on actor engagement and its role in value creation by providing a better understanding of the role of the national context in this process through unstructured data analysis.

The dynamic employee engagement framework visually delineates employee engagement from its antecedents and responds to the debates regarding how employee engagement is positioned within the academic literature.

A narrative literature review was conducted.

The new framework visually demonstrates the impact of contextual changes on employee engagement. Additionally, it positions employee engagement as a psychological state (psychological presence) and as a behaviour.

The new framework promotes the study of behavioural engagement when the incorporation of context and/or multiple voices is required. Accordingly, studying behavioural engagement may help scholars understand more about the dynamics of employee engagement within and across different settings, reduce the reliance on self-reported studies and help bridge the employee engagement academic and practitioner discourses.

Human resource management/development practitioners and line managers may use the new structured framework in several ways to help them foster employee engagement.

The new framework extends five integrated employee engagement models by incorporating the macro and micro external context, and repositioning trust and feedback. In doing so, it more accurately conveys diagrammatically the dynamic nature of employee engagement following significant contextual changes. It also visually separates out the antecedents to employee engagement thus respecting construct boundaries and positions employee engagement as a multi-dimensional construct comprised of psychological state (psychological presence) and behavioural engagement. Building on this, we also argue that double-loop learning is an example of behavioural engagement.

Online communities are increasingly important for organizations and marketers. However, the issue of how structural features of online communities affect consumers' behavioral engagement remains relatively unexplored. The purpose of this study is to examine how and why different types of interdependence within online communities (i.e. task/outcome interdependence) influence individual engagement in group activities, thereby providing insights regarding online community design.

Two surveys were conducted with two online groups in China. One is a task-interdependent group from Douban Forum, and the other is an outcome-interdependent group from Sina Forum. A total of 159 valid responses from the task-interdependent group and 162 valid responses from the outcome-interdependent group were received. We analyzed the data using multivariate regression with Smart PLS and SPSS.

The results reveal that both task and outcome interdependence are positively related to individual behavioral engagement in online group behavior, and collective efficacy mediates the aforementioned effects. In addition, task complexity moderates the relationship between task interdependence and individual behavioral engagement; communication within group moderates the relationship between outcome interdependence and behavioral engagement, and the effect is mediated by collective efficacy.

This study is the first to investigate the role of an important factor of group structure, namely, interdependence, in fueling individual behavioral engagement in online communities. The results shed light on companies' design strategies to develop and retain online community members and also provide important insights for researchers interested in social network marketing.

New-age technologies are driving brand digitalization and influencing consumer retail experiences and consumption patterns. Although past research addresses users’/consumers’ acceptance of these technologies in retail, it refrains from thoroughly studying interaction and engagement. Stemming from the technology acceptance model, the purpose of this paper is to empirically study the practicality of the technology-enabled engagement process comprising stages of interaction, psychological engagement, value-in-use and behavioral engagement during consumers’ interactions with augmented reality, artificial intelligence and machine learning based virtual try-on services.

Data from an online survey conducted in China of 339 consumers who experienced the virtual-try-on service is analyzed using partial least squares-structural equation modeling.

The results support the technology-enabled engagement process of brand virtual try-on services. Perceived ease of use and usefulness are robust antecedents of the framework during the interaction stage. Emotional and cognitive aspects contribute to the psychological engagement and value-in-use stages that convert into positive e-word of mouth and buying intentions about the brand in the behavioral engagement stage.

The research contributes to the technology acceptance model, information systems and technology marketing literature by testing a novel technology-enabled engagement process, which previously lacked empirical validation. Specifically, it uses technology acceptance model constructs as antecedents of the technology-enabled engagement process framework, with behavioral intentions in the form of e-word of mouth and buying intentions as precedents. It also provides insights into brands’ virtual try-on services in online retail environments. Practical implications for brand managers are discussed.

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the interest in the use of virtual reality (VR) for organizational collaboration has dramatically increased. However, empirical research on the optimal types of VR and avatar designs for effective collaboration remains limited. To address these gaps, this study investigates how VR types (immersive vs non-immersive) and avatar similarity (high vs low) impact collaboration performance, with a focus on the mediating roles of somatic, psychological and behavioral engagement.

Drawing on embodied cognition theory and grounded in user engagement theory, we developed a research model that delineates the factors influencing collaboration performance. This model was empirically tested with data collected from a laboratory experiment involving 195 participants, employing a 2 × 2 factorial design. The Engage VR was used for the experiment because it supports the same virtual environment for collaboration between immersive and non-immersive VR contexts. The data were analyzed at the team level (n = 65).

The results of this study reveal that both immersive VR and high avatar similarity significantly enhance collaboration performance by augmenting somatic engagement, which subsequently boosts psychological and behavioral engagement.

This research deepens the scholarly understanding of the intricate interplay among VR types, avatar design and user engagement. The study’s theoretical implications underscore the conceptualization of somatic engagement as a critical dimension of user engagement in virtual collaboration, enriching the extant literature on VR-based collaboration. It also provides pragmatic insights to enhance virtual collaboration in the workplace.