A multi-valenced perspective on consumer engagement within a social service

Abstract

The literature on customer engagement has focused on its positive valence at the expense of its negative manifestations. This study seeks to address this gap by exploring how positive, disengaged, and negative valences of engagement operate within the social service sector. Focus groups are used to create a multidimensional model exploring how different customer engagement valences operate through affective, cognitive, and behavioral dimensions, and in relation to two objects (service community and service provider). This approach provides a new and expanded view of customer engagement, and the process by which multiple valences of engagement manifest within a focal service relationship.