Consumer-Brand Engagement With E-Commerce Market Place Brands

Consumer-brand engagement (CBE) has gained much attention from both the academicians and practitioners. However, despite such scholarly attention, only a few studies have empirically tested the scale of CBE. Moreover, limited attention is paid toward examining the consumer- brand relationships in the e-commerce marketplace context. The study is an empirical investigation of the new ways for examining CBE by testing the impact of consumer advocacy (CA). Furthermore, the study has examined and validated the relationship between consumer involvement (CI) and CBE in the e-commerce marketplace context. The study has further examined the impact of CBE on two outcome variables, viz., positive word-of-mouth (PWOM) and brand usage intention (BUI). A sample size of 408 has been collected randomly from a postgraduate program of a large university located in south India. Various multivariate techniques (Confirmatory Factor Analysis & Path Analysis) have been applied to validate and test the proposed relationships. The results indicate that both CI and CA positively influence CBE. Further, CBE has a positive impact on PWOM and BUI.