Despite growing interest in both customer engagement and value co-destruction literature (Brodie et al., 2011; Dessart, Veloutsou & Morgan-Thomas, 2015; Echeverri & Skålen, 2011; Vafeas et al., 2016), avenues requiring research still remain. Current research has
focussed on how customers perceive and demonstrate their engagement but not so much on how suppliers perceive this engagement or how they are trying or would want to engage their customers (Kumar et al., 2010). Firms and customers may have very different perceptions of what customer engagement actually is, how customers can demonstrate engagement, and what kind of outcomes engagement can have. Additionally, the literature is separated into different streams such as brand engagement (Harrigan, Evers, Miles & Daly, 2017), social media engagement (Hollebeek, Glynn & Brodie, 2014), and a general understanding of customer engagement (Juric et al., 2016). This shows the lack of clear consensus on what engagement actually is, and more research is needed in order to understand the whole picture of customer engagement (Dessart, Veloutsou & Morgan-Thomas, 2016).
Customer engagement literature has explicitly stated how customer engagement can result in value co-creation (e.g. Chandler & Lusch, 2015; Islam and Rahman, 2016;
Jaakkola & Alexander, 2014). The negative consequences of customer engagement have been mostly overlooked despite its importance being noted by scholars (Bowden et al., 2014; Chandler & Lusch, 2015; Islam & Rahman, 2016). Some researchers have even noted that “engagement researchers have tended to focus their attention on the positive aspects of relationships. This focus has been at the expense of an understanding of the negative and problematic aspects of service relationships” (Bowden et al., 2014, p.24).
Previous research shows that engagement could be connected with value co-destruction (Chandler & Lusch, 2015; Islam & Rahman, 2016). These implicit links were the motivation for this thesis. The author of this thesis developed an assumption that certain situations or behaviours result in customer engagement leading to value co-destruction, instead of value co-creation. Thus, the main purpose of this thesis is to investigate the relationship between customer engagement and value co-destruction. Five different research gaps related to customer engagement, its outcomes, and value co-destruction were identified and investigated with four research questions. These gaps are elaborated next.
Gap 1: Lack of empirical research on the antecedents of customer engagement. The current research proposes that customer engagement is based on customer-based factors, for example, consumption goals, perceived costs/benefits, and trust (So, King & Sparks, 2014; van Doorn et al., 2010). Conversely, firm-based antecedents are, for example, brand characteristics, information, and offerings (Nguyen, Chang & Simkin, 2014; Vivek et al., 2012).Despite these findings, empirical research on the antecedents is still not sufficient enough to understand all the aspects of customer engagement’s antecedents (Hollebeek, Conduit & Brodie, 2016; Leckie, Nyadzayo & Johnson, 2016; Vivek, Beatty & Hazod, 2018). Customer engagement is context specific, so the limited amount of empirical evidence, especially from a limited number of industries, hinders generalisability. Lack of empirical research can skew the understanding of customer engagement’s antecedents.
Gap 2: Lack of research on customer engagement in B2B and B2G relationships. The literature on customer engagement has focused heavily on business-to-consumer (B2C) relationships (Chathoth, Ungson, Harrington & Chan, 2016; So, King & Sparks, 2016;
van Doorn et al., 2010), where engagement is related to customers’ behavioural motives (van Doorn et al., 2010) and desire to co-create experiences (Minkiewicz et al., 2014).
Customer engagement should not be seen as a phenomenon occurring only between firms and their consumers, but it occurs between firms as well (Vivek, Dalela & Beatty, 2016).
However, customer engagement has received little attention in business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-government (B2G) relationships, despite calls for it (Brodie et al., 2011; Reinartz & Berkmann, 2018; Vivek et al., 2016). B2C, B2B, and B2G relationships are fundamentally different; hence, insights from B2C studies cannot be transferred directly to the B2B or B2G setting. Further empirical research is required to acquire a sufficient level of understanding of customer engagement in B2B and B2G relationships.
Gap 3: Lack of research on the negative outcomes of customer engagement. Customer engagement is largely seen to have positive outcomes, but its possible negative consequences have been overlooked in current research (Alexander & Jaakkola, 2016;
Chandler & Lusch, 2015; Islam & Rahman, 2016). It is important to understand and identify both the positive and negative outcomes of customer engagement. For example, firms want to utilise their customers as social influencers; however, it is difficult for firms to control what their customers might say about their brand or products. Then, engagement can become harmful for firm because they will lose control over their marketing actions (Harmeling et al., 2017). If the negative outcomes of customer engagement are not researched, then a complete picture of customer engagement cannot be obtained. This also hinders the understanding of how customer engagement is connected with other concepts, such as value co-destruction.
Gap 4: Lack of empirical research on the antecedents of value co-destruction.Value co-destruction refers to a failed interaction process that results in a decline in an actor’s wellbeing (Plé & Cáceres, 2010). Specific antecedents, such as opportunism, absence of trust, customer misbehaviour, or role-conflict (Chowdhury, Gruber & Zolkiewski, 2016;
Kashif & Zarkada, 2015; Vafeas et al., 2016), can initiate an interaction process that ultimately fails.The research on value co-destruction is emerging and the understanding of the antecedents of value co-destruction is still limited (Echeverri & Skålen, 2011; Prior
& Marcos-Cuevas, 2016; Smith, 2013). Current research is still focusing only on how customer actions result in value co-destruction and this will provide a partial understanding of the bigger picture. It is equally important to understand how suppliers can engage in behaviour that results in reduced wellbeing for the customers and, eventually, value co-destruction (Prior & Marcos-Cuevas, 2016).
Gap 5: Lack of empirical research on how time influences value co-destruction. Value co-destruction is closely connected with value co-creation, which entails three processes:
provider processes, customer processes, and joint process, i.e. the service encounter (Payne, Storbacka & Frow, 2008). This implies that the provider and customer must prepare for the interaction in their own processes, execute the interaction, and perform post-interaction tasks. Thus, value co-creation happens over time (Grönroos & Voima, 2013). Recent studies suggest that value co-creation and co-destruction can exist simultaneously (Chowdhury et al., 2016), indicating that value co-creation can happen
before, during, or after the interaction as can value co-destruction. However, which antecedents of value co-destruction initiate value co-destruction at different time points of the collaboration is still unclear.Adopting a temporal lens can help develop a richer understanding of a phenomenon, value co-destruction in this case, because this lens can enrich our understanding of change and provide a new mechanism of interest (Kunisch, Bartunek, Mueller & Huy, 2015).
To summarise the discussion on the research gaps, Figure 1 depicts the five identified gaps and their connection with each other and with the main concepts of this thesis, customer engagement, and value co-destruction.
Figure 1. Illustration of the research gaps and their connection with the main concepts