부산대학교 도서관

The importance of customer engagement to sustain and foster business growth in an interactive environment has been recognised in the practitioner literature. It has also been observed that engaged customers become empowered in a given marketing communication environment. Yet, there has been very little, if any, academic enquiry examining these concepts within the mobile commutations context. This is surprising given that we are live in an increasingly mobile technology dominated world. Thus, the aim of this research is to examine customer engagement behaviour and its relationship to customer empowerment in the context of mobile communication. A conceptual model is built on the foundations of the technology acceptance model (TAM). This model seeks to explain the level of engagement and empowerment of customers in mobile marketing campaigns with subjective norms, information seeking, perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness as antecedents. The inquiry extends to examining the impact of moderating factors that influence customer engagement and empowerment along with behavioural intention as a consequence. Following Churchill (1979), a scale to measure engagement was developed. Given the positivist foundations of this study, an online questionnaire was used to collect data. Respondents were recruited from several popular electronic forums in Saudi Arabia. Following data collection, covariance based Structural Equation Modelling was employed in the analysis. The study makes a contribution both on a theoretical level and at a practical level. On a theoretical level, a new scale is developed to measure customer engagement. This will provide a basic understanding of customer behaviour in mobile marketing communication. The relationship between customer engagement and customer empowerment was significant. Subjective norms and information seeking were significant to customer empowerment, while only subjective norms were significant to customer engagement. Perceived usefulness was significant to customer engagement and customer empowerment, while perceived ease of use was insignificant to both of them. In addition, behavioural intention was significant to customer empowerment. On a practical level, the developed scale will help to improve customers’ relationships with businesses; as marketers are now able to enhance engagement by providing an outlet for social interaction, for example. Furthermore, a better understanding of customers’ behaviour will help marketing professionals to better segment and target the appropriate customers to enhance their loyalty.