Customer Engagement (Retail and Services)

Customer engagement is a topic which represents a fundamental component of any effective business and/or marketing strategy and impacts both private and public sector organisations. According to Verhoef et al (2011) engagement behaviours go beyond transactions and involve "all customers" behavioural manifestations that have a brand or "firm focus". Although this broad definition might include many strands of research, the particular focus of this group is on exploring the following dimensions of ‘engagement’.

Responsible customer engagement (e.g. ethical consumption, diversity and equality, misbehaviour)
Technology enabled engagement (e.g. using ‘e’ and ‘m’ commerce social media platforms)
Emotional or ‘creative’ engagement (e.g. using applied theatre to develop creative retail environments, developing and using emotions)
Efficient and effective engagement (e.g. value, supply chain, service quality)
Leadership and customer engagement (e.g. developing leadership skill sets, service orientation, cross cultural impacts)

The purpose of the group is to develop the distinctive expertise of staff and students in the field, acting as a catalyst for research development through mentoring and workshops. The group also provides content to inform curriculum development. It is an interdisciplinary group drawing on wider relevant academic expertise from the university and business sectors. In order to ensure our work has ‘impact’ we are developing an advisory group from industry who can share insights about best practice in the field.

The Retail and Services focus of the group reflects the research interests of core members of the group who are currently involved in an ESRC funded Retail Impact initiative.

The group currently meets once a month and will be promoting its activities at the forthcoming ICRM Colloquium to be held in Nottingham in September 2012. The theme for the 2012 Colloquium, "Human experiences…and beyond, to co-creation" aims to explore the role of human engagement platforms in an increasingly technological environment and reflects the work of our keynote speaker Professor Venkat Ramaswamy, Hallman Fellow of Electronic Business and Professor of Marketing at the Ross School of Business, University of Michigan, USA.