Research on customer engagement has burgeoned during the past decade, acknowledging the customer’s active role in driving service outcomes, and highlighting the potential benefits for firms of increasing engagement among customers (Brodie et al., 2019; Hollebeek et al., 2020). Despite growing knowledge of the customer engagement construct, understandings of engagement disposition valence (particularly negative engagement (Azer and Alexander, 2018; 2020)), customer engagement behaviours and disengagement remain limited (Alexander et al., 2018). This study seeks to address these knowledge gaps by exploring the impact of customer power (the power customers perceive they possess) on customer (dis)engagement. In particular, we explore the effect of varying levels of customer power on engagement disposition valence, behaviours and disengagement within service contexts. Intuitively, customer power is relevant to the customer engagement dialogue as it may influence customers’ expectations regarding their roles and behaviours in service contexts, and their anticipated service outcomes (Jaakkola and Alexander, 2014; Bowden et al., 2017). However, insight into the impact of customer power on customer engagement also remains scant.

A mixed-method methodology was implemented comprising an in-depth qualitative exploratory study and three scenario-based experiments. The qualitative study employed visual elicitation interviews whereby visual stimuli evoked participants’ rich descriptions of power and engagement and generated projective data which facilitated triangulation. The interviews focused on generating rich insights into customers’ perceptions of power in different business-to-consumer service contexts (for instance hospitality, banking and utility services) and demonstrated how customers’ varying levels of power affect their engagement valence, subsequent behaviours and disengagement. Findings highlighted that there is an iterative relationship between customer power and engagement. They also demonstrated several contributors to changing power levels over time. The scenario-based experiments showed the positive effect of customer power in relation to the firm on engagement disposition and offline and online behaviours in a hotel usage context. Additionally, the experiments demonstrated that: (i) customer power in relation to other customers, and (ii) the type of service setting, moderate the relationship between customer power and engagement.

This study extends the current engagement literature by identifying customer power as a driver and outcome of engagement valence and behaviours. Thus, it also contributes to the discussions surrounding the dynamic and evolving nature of engagement in service systems. In addition, this research sheds light on customers’ relative experiences of power within specific service contexts which complements existing discussions on high customer power in multi-actor networks. Furthermore, this research gives rise to several managerial recommendations regarding the management of customer-firm power dynamics and the consideration of other actors’ impact on the focal customer’s engagement when designing engagement strategies and tracking their outcomes.

Adjusting alignment of individual engagement behaviors to those of a collective owing to presumed, remolded and/or emerging goals, may take time. Actor engagement encapsulates the actors’ disposition and manifest behaviors to invest resources in interactions with other connected actors (Brodie et al., 2019). The disposition of an actor (i.e. their state of readiness or a tendency to act) informs the activity of engaging, and is informed by the engagement behaviors of the individual and others (ibid.). Kleinaltenkamp et al. (2019) argue that collective engagement, being more than the sum of the component individual actor engagement, is influenced by and influences institutional arrangements, and is enhanced when institutional settings are aligned. This paper considers what happens when an individual actor’s engagement is misaligned with the collective, illustrated through four possible scenarios.

Actor engagement is embedded within an institutional setting (Storbacka 2019), and institutional arrangements provide norms and rule structures that guide actor engagement. Individual actors may operate in several service ecosystems simultaneously (Karpen and Kleinaltenkamp, 2019). Consequently, not all actors will have aligned institutional perspectives and hence their engagement behaviors may manifest in different ways. However, institutional arrangements are constantly in flux and through the interactions of actors in the service ecosystem actors can change or disrupt engagement behaviors (Kleinaltenkamp et al., 2021). We propose four consequential scenarios:

First scenario: a focal actor identifies that her engagement behaviors are misaligned with the collective, through observational learning or explicit instruction from another actor. She would subsequently replicate the engagement behaviors of the collective and evaluate their effectiveness. Successful engagement would result in a modified engagement disposition for the focal actor and a tendency to act in a more aligned manner going forward.

Second scenario: the focal actor replicates the engagement behaviors of the collective, but does not perceive this to be the optimal mechanism for engaging. The actors’ engagement disposition remains unchanged and given the option she would embark on a different type of engagement behaviors. In this instance, the actor demonstrates spurious engagement and remains at least partially misaligned with the collective.

Third scenario: the focal actor disagrees with the engagement behaviors of the collective and seeks to change them. This actor is considered a ‘disruptor’, seeking to influence the engagement behaviors of the collective, and subsequently succeed in modifying the existing institutional arrangements of the collective group of actors.

Fourth scenario: the misalignment in engagement dispositions and/or engagement behaviors is not sustainable over an extended period. Assuming that the focal actor has mobility, she will likely swiftly exit from the collective and seek an alternate ecosystem more aligned with her engagement behaviors.

This paper considers a situation where the engagement behaviors of a focal actor are distinct from the collective engagement. We offer four scenarios that describe the various modifications to individual and collective engagement behaviors or dispositions as a result. The paper responds to recent calls for further research on the interplay between institutional logics and actor engagement in service ecosystems (Kleinaltenkamp et al., 2019; 2021).

The research area of engagement behaviors has garnered increasing attention among academics and practitioners, and is discussed in several sub fields, such as customer engagement (van Doorn et al. 2010; Verhoef, Reinartz, Krafft 2010) or actor engagement (Brodie et al. 2011, 2013, 2019). The development of the field has moved towards the development of a “theory of customer engagement marketing” (Harmeling et al. 2017). We contribute to this discussion by focussing on a topic not well studied in service literature, namley peer engagement behavior.
Research on peer engagement behaviors lacks not only theorizing but also on empirical evidence. Most studies are conceptual, and only a few studies measured antecedents, mediators, or consequences. Lin et al. (2019, p. 398) proposed that “peers display greater degrees of engagement behaviors” if they interact in an altruistic and social-driven peer context. However, empirical evidence on this effect is lacking. To close this research gap, we used the peer-to-peer partnership campaign of LesMills, a global fitness company, and UNICEF, as our research context. In this social-driven engagement context, fitness instructors’ support the social mission of “clean water in Africa” organized via the “Workout For Water” (WFW) peer-to-peer platform (workoutforwater.org).

We developed a conceptual framework. The model contains three categories of antecedents (peer provider-, supporter-, and platform-based antecedents) of peer engagement behaviors derived from previous conceptualizations and donating money as the financial, behavioral peer engagement consequence under study (Blasco-Arcas et al. 2020; Costello and Walker Reczek 2020; Fehrer et al. 2018; Lin et al. 2019). Moreover, inspiration is conceptualized in the framework as a key mediator in the relation between peer engagement behaviors antecedents and consequences. Our work adopted the motivational theory of role modeling by Morgenroth, Ryans, and Peters (2015) as its key theoretical foundation. The theory explains how individuals within a relationship or peer network who are perceived as role models influence and motivate other peers to engage.


To test the peer-to-peer effects empirically, we employed a web scraping technique that allowed us to collect observable behavioral data from the WorkoutForWater campaign, a partnership campaign of LesMills, a global fitness company, and UNICEF. We obtained two data sets: (1) the service provider dataset with behavioral information from 1,548 individuals and teams, and (2) the peer supporter dataset with behavioral information from 8,881 supporters who conducted a total of 10,129 financial transactions. The data analysis compromises three steps: 1) descriptive analysis, 2) ordinary least square regression, and 3) mediation analysis.
We find empirical proof of a positive mediating effect of inspiration in the model. Further, our results revealed seven antecedents with effects on peer engagement behaviors. Especially the action of initiating an additional event in the engagement process (ß=.519, p<.001) and the competence of the service provider (ß=.433, p<.001) are important antecedents of peer engagement.

Food waste is a global issue that has significant economic, environmental, and social consequences, with food waste minimisation included in the UN Sustainable Development Goals of 2030. A key contributor toward food waste is that large volumes of fresh produce with aesthetic defects are rejected by supermarkets, guided by consumers’ hesitancy to accept produce that looks less than ‘perfect’. Investigating how to address this hesitancy forms the research focus. Specifically, the study investigates the effect of customer value propositions (CVPs), the communication of a value package, on customer engagement (CE), a manifestation of consumers’ connection with and participation in preventing food waste. Supermarket retailing is a service context in which CE is a critical construct (Grewel et al., 2017).

This research aims to examine the value consumers experience through the behaviour of purchasing fruit and vegetables that may be deemed imperfect, and under what conditions this value is received through the following research questions:

RQ1: What is the relationship between the framed customer value propositions and customer engagement in the purchase of imperfect produce?

RQ2: Under what circumstances does each framed customer value proposition increase positive customer engagement over negative customer engagement?

The framed CVPs are expected to have a direct effect on customer engagement. Consumers value orientations are expected to moderate the relationship between the CVPs and CE.

A repeated measures experiment (n = 253) investigates the relationship between food waste CVPs (thrift, innovation, normalisation and salvation) developed by Närvänen et al., (2019), CE, and the influence of consumer value orientations on this relationship. The framed CVPs were designed to be presented on signage within the retail service context. Each participant viewed one randomly allocated CVP.

Findings show a thrift CVP, whereby purchasing imperfect produce is framed as a ‘bargain’, does not enhance positive customer engagement (PCE) overall, but increases cognitive PCE for consumers with high egoistic or low biospheric value orientations. When the normalisation CVP was viewed, behavioural PCE increased overall, and cognitive PCE was enhanced when egoistic or biospheric value orientation was low. The innovation CVP both increased behavioural PCE and decreased behavioural negative customer engagement (NCE), but interestingly also increased cognitive NCE. This may suggest that while more likely to think about negative information pertaining to imperfect produce, people were still willing to engage in the behaviour of purchasing it over perfect produce. Finally, the salvation CVP, an appeal to save the produce from becoming waste, had the greatest positive effect, increasing cognitive, affective, and behavioural PCE, particularly for consumers with high biospheric value orientations.

This research contributes by extending understanding of the outcomes of CVPs, building on the nascent and largely conceptual literature on CVPs by examining the relationship between CVPs and CE as well as how this is moderated by consumer value orientations. Practically, the study operationalises CVPs to provide an understanding of how consumer behaviour can be modified in a retail service context for food waste prevention through enhancing CE with imperfect produce.