Customer engagement in a facebook brand community A study of Airline consumers in Vietnam

UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY
International School of Business
________________

Le Minh Hoang Long

CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT IN A FACEBOOK
BRAND COMMUNITY:
A study of Airline consumers in Vietnam
ID: 22130038
MASTER OF BUSINESS (Honors)

SUPERVISOR: DR. NGUYEN THI MAI TRANG

Ho Chi Minh City, Year 2016


Acknowledgement
Firstly, I would like to express my gratefulness to my supervisor Dr. Nguyen Thi Mai Trang
for her professional guidance, intensive support, valuable suggestions, instructions and
encouragement during the time of doing my research.
I would like to express my deepest gratitude to ISB Professors Committee for their valuable
time as the members of the proposal examination committee. Their comments and
meaningful suggestions were contributed significantly for my completion of this research.
My sincere thanks are given to all of my teachers at International Business School –
University of Economics Ho Chi Minh City for their teaching and guidance during my master
course.

i

Abstract
Customer engagement is a group of factors that can affect the customer satisfaction, loyalty.
The advent of Web 2.0 and in particular the social network media in recent years have led to
an explosion of interest in customer engagement. Attracted by a great amount of users,
companies have created brand communities in social networks. With the abilities to creating
the interaction among individuals and firms in brand communities, social media can use to
better serve customer and satisfy the needs. In Vietnam, former researches measuring the
loyalty and satisfaction of customers engaged in social networking sites, such as Facebook,
are still rare. This research aims to fill this gap by testing these hypotheses in airline industry
and raising recommendations for its applications in practice.

Key words Customer engagement, brand community, facebook, customer loyalty,
customer satisfaction.

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CONTENTS
Acknowledgement ...................................................................................................................... i
List of Figures ........................................................................................................................... vi
List of Tables ........................................................................................................................... vii
Introduction ........................................................................................................... 1
Research background ................................................................................................... 1
Statement of the problem ............................................................................................. 4
Research objectives ...................................................................................................... 6
Research scope ............................................................................................................. 7
Structure of the research............................................................................................... 7
Literature review ................................................................................................... 9
Brand Community (BC) ............................................................................................... 9
Online brand community (OCB) ................................................................................ 10

Customer engagement ................................................................................................ 10
Customer engagement in brand community .............................................................. 12
Perceived relationship benefits of customer engagement in brand communities ...... 12
Relationship outcomes of customer engagement in brand communities ................... 14
Proposal model and hypotheses ................................................................................. 16
2.7.1.

Proposal model .................................................................................................... 16

2.7.2.

Hypotheses summary .......................................................................................... 17

Chapter summary ....................................................................................................... 18
Methodology ....................................................................................................... 19
Research method ........................................................................................................ 19
Research design .......................................................................................................... 19
3.2.1.

Sample ................................................................................................................. 19

3.2.2.

Measurement scale .............................................................................................. 20

Research procedure .................................................................................................... 24
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3.3.1.

Qualitative phase ................................................................................................. 25

3.3.2.

Main survey - Quantitative research ................................................................... 26

Chapter summary ....................................................................................................... 27
Data analysis and results ..................................................................................... 28
Data statistical analysis .............................................................................................. 28
Cronbach’s alpha reliability test ................................................................................ 29
Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) ............................................................................. 32
Reliability test after EFA ........................................................................................... 36
Modified Model and Hypotheses ............................................................................... 36
Testing research model using structural equation modeling (SEM) .......................... 37
4.6.1.

Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) ................................................................... 37

4.6.2.

Structural equation model ................................................................................... 42

Hypotheses evaluation ............................................................................................... 45
Chaper summary ........................................................................................................ 46
Conclusion and implication ................................................................................. 48
Key findings and research contributions .................................................................... 49
5.1.1.

Impact of customer engagement behavior .......................................................... 49

5.1.2.

Measurement model ............................................................................................ 49

Managerial implications ............................................................................................. 50
5.2.1.

Customer engagement behaviors ........................................................................ 50

5.2.2.

Perceived relationship benefits.......................................................................... 51

5.2.3.

Relationship Outcomes........................................................................................ 51

Limitations and future research .................................................................................. 52
APPENDIX 1: List of in-depth interview’s participants ......................................................... 62
APPENDIX 2. Questionaire .................................................................................................... 65
APPENDIX3. CFA ………………………………………………………………………….67
APPENDIX 4. Maximum Likelihood Estimates ..................................................................... 77

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List of abbreviations
ATAG Air Transport Action Group
BC Brand Community

CE Customer engagement
CEB Customer engagement behavior
IATA International Air Transport Association
JPA Jetstar Pacific Airlines
OCB Online brand community
VJ VietJet Air
VNA Vietnam Airlines

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LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 2.1. The conceptual Model .........................................................................................17
Figure 3.1. The Research Process ............................................................................................25
Figure 4.1. The Revised Model ...............................................................................................37
Figure 4.2. Diagram CFA ........................................................................................................39
Figure 4.2. The structural model result ....................................................................................43

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LIST OF TABLES

Table 3.1. Source of measurement scale ................................................................................. 20
Table 3.2. Sources of data collection ....................................................................................... 27
Table 4.1. Description of sample ............................................................................................. 29
Tables 4.2. Cronbach’s alpha results ....................................................................................... 30
Tables 4.3. Retest Cronbach’s alpha results ............................................................................ 32
Table 4.4. Pattern Matrix – EFA first round............................................................................ 34
Table 4.5. Pattern Matrix – EFA last round ............................................................................ 35

Table 4.6. Cronbach's alpha of new measurements ................................................................. 36
Table 4.7. Composite Reliability and Average Variance Extracted ........................................ 40
Table 4.8. Discriminant validity test .......................................................................................41
Table 4.9. Fitness of conceptualized model ............................................................................42
Table 4.10. Result of hypothesis testing ..................................................................................44
Table 4.11. Standardized regression weight of hypothesis .....................................................44

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INTRODUCTION
Research background
The globalization of competition, saturation of markets, and development of information
technology have enhanced customer awareness and created a situation where long-term
success is no longer achieved through optimized product price and qualities. Instead,
companies build their success on a long-term customer relationship by satisfying customer’s
needs and transferring customers to loyal customers. In recent years, customer engagement
has been viewed as a hot issue to build long-term customer relationship (Sashi, 2012).
Customer engagement (CE) is difined as “the engagement of customers with one another,
with a company or a brand. The initiative for engagement can be either consumer- or
company-led and the medium of engagement can be on or offline.” (Roebuck, 2012).
Customer engagement can be the variety activities as joining the brand’s fan group, take part
in brand’s contest, disscussing about products or like brand’s facebook, commenting on
website, etc. Firms that have more engagement of customer can improve customer
satisfaction and loyalty (Brodie, Ilic, Juric, & Hollebeek , 2011; Gummerus, Liljander,
Weman, & Minna, 2012).

Customer engagement (CE) generate enhanced corporate

performance, including sales growth (Neff, 2007 as cited in Brodie et al., 2011), and

profitability (Voyles, 2008 as cited in Brodie et al., 2011). As a result, customer engagement
becomes a competitive advantage in the globalization economic.
Aviation is one of the most important aspects of global economic nowadays. Aviation
provides the rapid worldwide transportation network, which makes it essentials for global
business and tourism. The total value of goods transported by air represent 35% of all
international trade and 52% of international tourists travel by air (ATAG, 2014). Come up
with the globalization process, airlines industry is in the difficulty situation. Volatile fuel
pricing, intense competition, security concerns and a focus on the environmental impact of air
travel have resulted in airline profitability taking a nosedive. Therefore, increasingly airlines
are looking to have a far more direct and real-time connection with their customers and
prospective customers. Leung, Schuckert and Yeung (2013) state that social media is a
suitable tools for marketing purpose in the airlines bussiness. In the global trends, the social
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networks are increasingly replacing traditional media for marketing and communications.
They have become a major factor in influencing various aspects of consumer behavior
including awareness, information acquisition, opinions, attitudes, purchase behavior, and
post­purchase communication and evaluation (Mangold & Faulds, 2009). The application of
social media and web 2.0 is changing the communication between business and consumer
and consumer to consumer significantly (Au, 2010; Jones & Yu, 2010). This reality is shown
by airlines’ increasing social media engagement of customers (Kepes, 2014).
With airline industry, social media is playing an increasing important role in daily
operations (NIIT, 2013). Passengers are increasingly using the web and mobile devices to
research, book and pay for trips. AITA (2014) reports that more than 50% passengers go
online to book flights. From the airlines side, the world airline industry is switching to
promoting booking deals and flight promotions on Facebook and other social media websites.
For examples, passengers can book their flights via Facebook or Twitter on KLM Royal
Dutch Airlines, JetBlue or Virgin America (Consumerreports.org, 2015). This new trend put
airlines in the effort of building customer engagement to firms’ social media.

In Vietnam, air service industry affected economic growth significantly. According to the
statistics of IATA by Tyler (2014) - IATA’s Director General, Vietnam’s aviation market is
forecast to be the world’s 7th fastest-growing in the period of 2013-2017, with annual growth
rates of 6.9 percent and 6.6 percent expected for international passengers (Tyler, 2014). In the
trend of transitioning and developing Vietnam’s economy, a restructuring plan of Vietnam’s
air service industry was approved by the Ministry of Transport aim to gain the 5th position in
ASEAN aviation market and raise the passengers carried by airlines achieving 3.23% of all
overall the domestics transport market share (Viet Nam Government Portal, 2015). Hence,
there is a tough competition between airlines companies from the time government
authorized the operation of private airlines as the commitment between Vietnam and WTO in
2007. Up to now, there are four major air carries in Vietnam: Vietnam Airlines (VNA),
Jetstar Pacific Airlines (JPA) and VietJet Air (VJ) and Vietnam Air Services Company
(VASCO) (Civil Aviation Administration of Vietnam, 2015). Customers have choices to

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choose airlines when traveling in domestic routes. This competition leads to the result that
airline companies must find the effective ways to attract and retain customers.
As per the statistics by Moore Online Development Solutions Corporation, Vietnam has
the population of 90.73 million with 39% internet users. 40% internet users use online brand
website to make purchasing decision (Moore Corporation, 2015a). Therefore, the
understanding on role of social media affecting to the Vietnam airline industry becomes
important than ever. Besides, social networking sites such as Facebook, YouTube, or
LinkedIn are playing more important roles in business. According to Chui, Manyika, Bughin,
Dobbs, Roxburgh, Sarrazin, and Westergren (2012) there are 70% companies advocated
social media technologies to transform businesses and improve organizational performance.
The application of social media affects the ways company and in particular airlines company
doing business.
In the report of We are social (2015) facebook is reviewed to become the world largest

social media platform with 1,366 million users in Q1, 2015. Besides, in the academic aspect,
Gummerus, Liljander, Weman and Minna (2012) have indicated facebook brand community
offer both firms and customers new ways to engaged with each other. They pointed out that
customer engagement in a facebook brand community is the group of people who engaged
into a specific brand by clicking “Like” on its Facebook fan page. Customer as a fan page’s
member easy to follow information, to read and write comments, to share experiences, to
complain to the brand owner as well as to communicate with other members of that fan page.
Companies who encourage customer engagement in their facebook brand community will
lead to purchase behavior, customer satisfaction and customer loyalty (Gummerus, Liljander,
Weman, & Minna, 2012).
In fact, Facebook is emerging as the largest social media networks in Viet Nam. It is the
most popular social platforms with 31.3 million users, make up 94% of social network
account ownership (Moore Corporation, 2015a). 33% Vietnamese passengers research
information before trip on social media (Moore Corporation, 2015b). This situation creates an
environment to airline’s marketers for touching with this community. Airline companies
started to build their facebook fan page for so that customers can follow their information and
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directly interact with them. With the tendency of opening airlines market and the more
competition, Vietnam airline companies should concern about the issue of attracting customer
engagement to their facebook brand community to gain customer satisfaction, customer
loyalty and good business performance.
Statement of the problem
Customer engagement has emerged in the last few years as a topic of great interest to
managers and consultants in diverse industries and companies worldwide (Sashi, 2012). This
issue has been discussed in many researches (see e.g Bowden, 2009; van Doorn et al., 2010;
Roberts & Alpert, 2010; Brodie et al., 2011; Fliess, Nadzeika & Nesper, 2012). All these
disscussions

generally have the deep understanding in customer engagement and the

important of customer engagement in achiving bussiness growth. Customer engagement
create the deep connections with customers that drive purchase decisions, interaction with
firms (Forrester Consulting as cited in Sashi, 2012). A customer's engagement in a brand
community results in a number of outcomes for firms’ growth, including the customer's
continuing participation in the community, satisfaction, increased trust in, commitment and
loyalty (Wirtz et al., 2013; Brodie et al., 2011). The advent of Web 2.0 and in particular the
social network sites (like My space, Facebook, Google plus) in recent years have led to an
explosion of interest in customer engagement. Attracted by a great amount of users,
companies have created brand communities in social media. With the abilities to creating the
interaction among individuals and firms in brand communities, social media can use to better
serve customer and meet the needs .Therefore, the establishment of company’s social
network sites in the recent years presented an opportunity to built close relationship with
customer by enhancing the customer engagement to brand community.
In the view of airline industry, intergrating the bussiness with the social media will be the
new trend of bussiness (Leung et al., 2013). Airline companies can use social media to build
relationships and create greater interaction with customers, listen to what their customers are
saying and to respond in real-time, facilitate engagement with its customers and increase
awareness about the brand (Kahonge, 2013). Recently, many airline companies have created
facebook page for to give information, launch promotion, feedback and respond to
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customers’ complains and sell tickets. The airline industry is also reported to be one of the
leading sectors in deploying Facebook for customer care (Kollau, 2015). Hence, customer
engagement to airline brand communities on facebook has entered the lexicon of airline
managers as well as proposed an interested topic for researches.
With present situation of Vietnam’s dynamic and rapidly growing aviation market, airline
companies seek for an efficiency way to support business growth and compete with others.

Facebook which has reported to be a largest social network in Vietnam (Moore Corporation,
2015a) has been adopted as a new marketing tool for all the airlines in the past few years. Up
to now, all the fours airlines include Vietnam Airlines, Jetstar Pacific Airlines, VietJet Air
and Vietnam Air Services Company have fan page on facebook. They generally use facebook
page to communicate with customers, provide information and promote their brand. On the
trends of Vietnam’s aviation market development, airline companies are now trying to have
more participation of customers on the fan page and using fan page’s activities to attract and
retain customers. Basing in on this problem, this research aims to examine the engagement of
customer on facebook brand community in the context of Vietnam’s airline industry likewise
find out more critical implications to help the manager of Vietnam’s airline companies
turning up their customer’s satisfaction and loyalty by improve the engagement of customer.
In the regard of customer engagement, many researchers have been at the forefront of
attempts to define and figure out the ways to build customer engagement to online brand
community. Brodie et al. (2011) examines consumer engagement in a virtual brand
community is an aspect of interactive process of sharing, learning, socializing, advocating,
and co-developing. Sashi (2012) develops a model of customer engagement cycle in the
platform of social media with connection, interaction, satisfaction, retention, loyalty,
advocacy, and engagement as stages in the cycle. An exploratory study is conducted by
Javornik and Mandelli (2012) to investigate the behavioral perspectives of customer
engagement with three FMCG brands in the social media environment. With the use of
facebook as a social media, Pronschinske, Groza and Walker (2012), Mitu and Vega (2014)
study about customer engagement firm’s facebook page. Especially, findings in Gummerus et
al. (2012) research give ideas about how firms can utilize customer engagement to brand
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facebook communities to enhance satisfaction and loyalty by offering the right kinds of
relationship benefits. However, the majority of these studies have been conducted to build
framework of theories or undertaken in advanced economies in the fields of training products,
FMCG products or game products. There is little researches have been done or addressed in

airlines sector in developing and transitioning countries such as Vietnam. Until recently, there
is only the research of Pham and Tran (2014) axamines the customer engagement in
Vietnam’s tourism facebook brand page.
Therefore, we have the reason to examine the customer engagement in Vietnam’s airlines
facebook brand community and delivering the practical implications for airline company’s
managers to gain customer satisfaction and loyalty through customer engagement.
Research objectives
The overall objective of this study is to examine the effect of customer engagement
behavior on customer commitment, customer word of mouth and customer satisfaction and
mediating through perceived benefits. Specifically, it investigates:
-The relationship between Customer Engagement behavior and Social benefit
-The relationship between Customer Engagement behavior and Entertainment benefit
-The relationship between Customer Engagement behavior and Economic benefit
-The relationship between Social benefit and Customer Brand Page Commitment
-The relationship between Social benefit and Customer Word of Mouth
-The relationship between Social benefit and Customer Brand Page Commitment
-The relationship between Entertainment benefit and Brand Page Commitment
-The relationship between Entertainment benefit and Customer Word of Mouth
-The relationship between Entertainment benefit and Satisfaction
-The relationship between Economic benefit and Brand Page Commitment
-The relationship between Economic benefit and Customer Word of Mouth
-The relationship between Economic benefit and Satisfaction

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Research scope
The sample of this study targets to the facebook users who became a fan of an airline
company’s fan page (by click “like the fan page).
Three airline companies operating in Vietnam domestic routes are implemented the

survey. Those are: Vietnam Airlines (VNA), Jetstar Pacific Airlines (JPA) and VietJet Air
(VJ). Vietnam Air Services Company (VASCO) was excluded. Indeed, there are two main
reasons for this choice. Firstly, VNA, JPA and VJ hold 98.5% of domestic route market share
up to 2014 with 56% of VNA, 29.4% of VJ and 13.1% of JPA (Anh, 2014). Secondly, those
three airlines flight to almost major domestic destination like Ha Noi, Ho Chi Minh, Da
Nang, Nha Trang, Da Lat, Phu Quoc. Whereas, on the other hand, VASCO with the lowest
market share just flights to small destination like Quy Nhon, Tam Ky.
Structure of the research
The research consists of four chapters:
Chapter 1: Introduction
This chapter presents research background of the study, as well as, research problems,
research objectives, research scopes.
Chapter 2: Literature Review and Hypotheses
This chapter provides the literature review and previous studies, and then the research model
of the study and the hypotheses are also discussed.
Chapter 3: Research Methodology
In this chapter, the method used to design and implement the research base on the research
objectives and scopes, the processes of doing the research are also presented.
Chapter 4: Data Analysis and Data Results
All the data collected from the survey are analyzed. The final model of the research is built
based on the results of those analyses. Depending on output results from the analyzing, the
relationship of those factors as mentioned in the research model will be examine
Chapter 5: Conclusion, Implications And Limitations

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The final chapter discusses summarily the study’s core findings, suggests some
recommendations for business strategy of using social media in airline industry based on
findings and finally points out some limitations of the research.

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LITERATURE REVIEW
In order to achieve these objectives this study, this part presents a discussion of customer
engagement behaviors, brand community, customer engagement in brand community,
perceived relationship benefit of customer engagement in brand community, customer
satisfaction, customer loyalty and the relationship of those constructs. This is followed by the
development of hypotheses and the construction of a conceptual model.
Brand Community (BC)
Muniz and O’Guinn (2001, p. 412) defined that “A brand community as specialized,
non­geographically bound community, based on a structured set of social relationships
among admires of a brand. It is specialized because at its center is a branded good or service.
Like other communities, it is marked by shared consciousness, rituals and traditions, and a
sense of moral responsibility.”

A brand community is a collective of people with a shared

interest in a specific brand, creating a subculture around the brand with its own values, myths,
hierarchy, rituals and vocabulary (Cova & Pace, 2006 as cited in Pham & Tran, 2014).
Studies show that customers joining in a brand community become more loyalty and enhance
the relationship (Gummerus et al., 2012).
Furthermore, McAlexander, Schouten, and Koenig, (2002) showed four crucial
relationships in a brand community: between the customer and the brand, between the
customer and the firm, between the customer and the product in use, and among fellow
customers. Woisetschlager, Hartleb, and Blut. (2008) found two reasons for consumer
participation in brand communities: community satisfaction and degree of consumer
influence within the community. In addition, brand communities give the potential of
improving the relationship between the consumers and the brand (Sicilia & Palazón, 2008).

Consequently, regarding the existing research on brand communities, we can see
community identification as a central influence for community participation. Previous work
has shown that brand community engagement can affect membership loyalty, brand image,
and word­of­mouth (Bhattacharya, Rao, & Glynn, 1995). Thus, community participation and
membership can be seen as an important tool for a successful branding strategy.
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Online brand community (OCB)
Muniz and O'Guinn (2001) place the development of brands and brand communities in
the context of the development of mass media and modern marketing that started in the early
nineteenth century. Result in the a massive adoption of advances in internet, social media and
mobile in the last decicate, there is a proliferation of online brand communities (OCBs). By
2012, 50 percent of the top 100 global brands had established an OBCs (Manchanda,
Packard, & Pattabhiramaiah, 2012). It raises an issue for firms to establish and manage
OBCs and customer engagement to OCB.
As Wirtz et al. (2013) has indicated the four key dimensions that significantly shape an
OBC:
Brand orientation. The core focus of an OBC can be the brand itself (including brandrelated consumption experiences such as riding a Harley Davidson bike), a wider shared
interest (e.g. biking in general), or both.
Internet-use. Both entirely online and online/offline hybrid BCs can be considered as
OBCs.
Funding and governance. OBCs can range from being entirely funded by the brand, to being
fully funded by the community of enthusiasts. Likewise, OBCs can be governed either
entirely by the brand at one extreme, or entirely by the BC at the other.
Customer engagement
Customer engagement has become an interested issue to business managers and
researchers in recently years. As existed researches have been discussed, there are different
ways to conceptualize the customer engagement concept. The main research streams for
investigating the customer engagement that were identified in the academic literature, are

thus the following: a) behavioral perspective – concerned with the behavioral aspects of
customer engagement and

customers’ activities, most often beyond purchase; b)

psychological (cognitive and affective) perspective - investigating customers’ cognitive and
affective processes which are antecedents to engagement or to interaction with brands; c)
multidimensional perspective - unifying different dimensions of customer engagement and
proposing multidimensional approach; d) social perspective - investigating the social and
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network component of the phenomenon (van Doorn et al., 2010; Mollen & Wilson, 2010;
Brodie et al., 2011; Gambetti, Graffigna & Biraghi, 2012).
. This stream of behavioral perspective studies on customer engagement (Sashi, 2012;
Gummerus et al., 2012; Javornik & Mandelli, 2012; Ahuja & Medury, 2010;) bases the
research on the definition elaborated by Van Doorn et al. (2010). These studies investigate
consumers’ activities such as word-of-mouth, recommendations, repeat purchases, social
media activities, community participation, interactions with brands and similar. Such
approach is often favored by practitioners as it can lead to quantification and measurement of
consumers’ activities in their interactions with brands. The engagement of customers to the
online brand community reflects in activities as clicking “like”, commenting, using brand
applications… Thus, this analysis adopts a behavioral perspective of customer engagement
because it places attention to customer’s activities and highlights the active role of them.
When it comes to the behavioral perspective, customer engagement (CE) is defined as
"behaviors [that] go beyond transactions, and may be specifically defined as a customer's
behavioral manifestations that have a brand or firm focus, beyond purchase, resulting from
motivational drivers" (van Doorn et al., 2010, p. 254). It reflects “consumers' interactive
experience within online brand communities, and value co-creation among community
participants” (Brodie et al., 2011, p. 105). Customer engagement behaviors (CBEs) consist

of joining brand activities, helping other customers, writing reviews, complaining to
organizations, blogging. Sashi (2012) stated a similar conceptualization of the consumer
engagement. Sashi's customer engagement cycle is composed of the following stages:
connection, interaction, satisfaction, retention, commitment, advocacy and engagement. It
may be confirmed that customer engagement is an interactive, experiential process that
capture how and why customers behave in ways relevant to the firm and other customers.
In the research of Gummerus et al., (2012) the authors pointed out that customer’
engagement consists of 5 dimensions: (1) customer engagement can be expressed in different
ways depending on the customer’s resources (e.g. time); (2) it can result in different types of
outcomes for the customer (e.g. improvements in the service); (3) it can vary in scope and be
momentary, such as issuing a complaint, or ongoing behavior; (4) it has varying impact on
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the firm and peers (negative/positive); and (5) customers may engage in the behaviors for
different purposes.
Customer engagement in brand community
Traditionally, customers’ engagement in a brand community is shown in many activities
of their behaviors to that brand: more frequency on visits, purchasing behaviors, purchasing
intention. In the context of social media, the customers engaged into the brand via joining to
online brand communities. Facebook fan page is an example, via clicking “Like” on the fan
page, customers interact directly with the brand owners or communicate with other members
insight the community. The customers joining in a facebook brand fan page is perceived to
get benefits: Social, Entertainment, and Economic upon joining the community (Gummerus
et al., 2012 ; Pham & Tran, 2014).
Besides, Gummerus et al. (2012) indicated that customer engagement in a facebook
brand community consists of 2 constructs:
Community Engagement Behaviors: the behaviors of visit, content liking, commenting
and news reading (Gummerus et al. 2012).
Transaction Engagement behaviors: The behaviors of transactions with firm like take

part in activities on fan page (Playing games, joining contests, …) or spent money on firm’s
products Gummerus et al., 2012 ; Pham & Tran, 2014).
Perceived relationship benefits of customer engagement in brand communities
Gwinner, Gremler and Bitner (1998) emphasized that in order to create and maintain
relationships between two parties both need to feel that they gain something (as cited in
Gummerus et al., 2012). Therefore, the customer engagement behaviors may be strengthen by
satisfying the needs and gaining benefits from the behavior itself or from the overall brand
relationship.
Colgate, Buchanan-Oliver and Elmsly (2005) confirmed that customer receives
relationship benefit from internet-base relationship. Online brand communities especially on
facebook offer some kinds of benefits to customers. According to the researches of Kaplan
and Haenlein (2010) brand comminities in social media have the benefits of enabling social
12


presence, avoiding uncertainty, reducing ambiguity and delevering self-presentation.
Dholakia, Bagozzi, & Pearo, (2004) found that customers can gain practical and
informational benefits by engaging in community behaviors. In another study, Wirtz et al.,
(2013) stated that online brand community increase the social benefits and functional benefits
of members.
In an article study, Gummerus et al., (2012) sum up all the theoris above and supposed
that customer engament in a online brand comunities have three perceived relationship
benefits: social benefits, entertainment benefits and economic benefits:
Social benefits are rise from the interaction between customer and company and also
customer and customer. For example, customers engage in discussions with peers, giving and
receiving help. In addition, they can be seen thanking the company for birthday bonuses and
gifts. Customers may also seek social enhancement, which derives from the need to feel
useful, recognized and needed in the community (Hars & Ou, 2002; Ho & Dempsey, 2010;
Nambisan & Baron, 2010 as cited in Gummerus et al., 2012)
Entertainment benefits are derived from relaxation and fun (Dholakia et al., 2004).

People spend their time browsing the community pages and applications such as games can
be incorporated to a Facebook site (Gummerus et al., 2012).
Economic benefits refer to people joining brand communities in order to gain discounts
and time savings, or to take part in raffles and competitions (Gummerus et al., 2012).
The next important issue that Gummerus et al. (2012) proved is customer behavioral
engagement has a possitive effect on ralationship benefits. A research conducted by Pham
and Tran (2014) in context on Vietnam travel industry also come up with the same finding.
Wirtz et al. (2013) has express a similar view that the increase the social and functional
benefits members perceive, and in turn enhance their engagement in the OBC.
Based on above arguments, the following hypothesis is developed:
H1a. Community Engagement behavior has positive impact Social benefit
H1b: Community Engagement behavior has positive impact Entertainment benefit
H1c: Community Engagement behavior has positive impact Economic benefit
H2a: Transaction Engagement behavior has positive impact Social benefit
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H2b: Transaction Engagement behavior has positive impact Entertainment benefit
H2c: Transaction Engagement behavior has positive impact Economic benefit
Relationship outcomes of customer engagement in brand communities
A customer's engagement in a brand community is likely to have a number of outcomes,
including the customer's continuing participation in the community, satisfaction, increased
trust in, commitment, loyalty and word of mouth intentions (Wirtz et al., 2013; Brodie et al.,
2011; Sashi, 2012; Tsai & Huang, 2007; Chan, Zheng, Cheung, Lee & Lee, 2014).
Brand page commitment refers to a psychological attachment of participants to the
community building efforts of a brand in social media environments, e.g. the creation of a
Facebook fanpage of the brand (Kim et al., 2008; Morgan & Hunt, 1994 as cited in
Hutter, Hautz, Dennhardt, & Fuller, 2013). Brand page commitment can be viewed as the
active and psychological involvement of a consumer with the social media activities of a
brand. Hutter et al. (2013) indicated that that engagement with a Facebook fanpage has

positive effects on consumers’ brand commitment. Customers joining in a fanpage have
relationship with brand through this page. Sashi (2012) demonstrated the concept of affective
commitment – a commitment in a relationship that base on emotional. He also stated that
customer engagement occurs when customers have strong emotional bonds in relational
exchanges with sellers,

customer engagement will lead to customer commitment in

engament cycle.
Word of mouth (W-O-M) is personal communication between a receiver and a source
that the receiver perceives as noncommercial (Day, 1971). WOM effectively can cause
changes in opinion and behavior, as well as drive brand awareness and excitement about a
product or services (WOMMA, 2005). Word-of-mouth tends to flow through interpersonal
channels based on shared interests, friendship, or family and people commonly use it to seek
information when they are facing with a high­risk purchase situation (Murray, 1991); A
research was drew on marketing and consumer behavior literature to formulate a conceptual
framework, empirically tested the hypotheses using data obtained from a large online
retailing store in Taiwan by Tsai and Huang (2007) stated that community building is
positively related to repurchase intention. Thereby, we believe that engagement in online
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brand communities will lead to positive behaviors of members such as word-of-mouth
behaviors (Mollen & Wilson, 2010; Chan et al., 2014).
Satisfaction is the customer’s value fulfillment response (Bloemer & Dekker, 2007). The
relationship between service satisfaction and loyalty is non-linear, meaning that in case
satisfaction increases above a certain level, customer loyalty will increase rapidly (Oliva,
Oliver, & MacMillan, 1992). Oliver (1997) assumed customer satisfaction is a judgment that
a product or service feature, or the product or service itself, provided (or is providing) a
pleasurable level of consumption-related fulfillment, including levels of under- or over

fulfillment (as cited in Güngör, 2007) Consumer satisfaction is likewise positively influence
by customers' affective responses such as their enjoyment, excitement and pleasure of using
the service (Lynch, Kent, & Srinivasan, 2001), and these may be experienced due to customer
engagement. Customer satisfaction can be seen as a measure of the quality of the relationship
between the customer and the firm (De Wulf & Odekerken-Schröder, 2001). When an brand
community meets or exceeds consumers' expectation in achieving these goals, they are likely
to be satisfied with the OBC (Woisetschlager et al., 2008). Satisfaction with the OBC has a
direct effect on consumers' intention to carry out behaviors such as saying positive things
about the brand, recommending it to others, and remaining loyal to it in their purchasing
decisions (Wirtz et al., 2013).
There are a lot of researches illustrated the important of customer satisfaction with firms.
But studies on the how customer engagement behaviors has influent on customer satisfaction
are still small in number. The customer behavioral engagement in a brand community is
hoped to support the degree of satisfaction and loyalty of customer. The more engaged
customers are, the higher we expect their satisfaction (Brodie et al., 2011, Wirtz et al., 2013).
As has been already discussed above, customer commitment, W-O-M and customer
satisfaction can viewed as the outcomes of customer engagement. Gwinner et al. 1998 point
out perceived benefit are belibed to perecede ralationship out come contruts (as cited in
Gummerus et al., 2012). In a analysis in southeast asian service industries context, Patterson
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& Smith

(2001) claims the correlation beetween relationship benefits and outcomes

(satisfaction and loyalty). Studies by Gummerus, et al. (2012); Pham and Tran (2014)
revealed that perceived benefits will mediate the effect of customer engagement on
relationship outcomes. Based on this result , the following hypothesis is given:
H3a Social benefit has positive impact on Customer Brand Page Commitment

H3b Social benefit has positive impact on Customer Word of Mouth
H3c Social benefit has positive impact on Customer Brand Page Commitment
H4a Entertainment benefit has positive impact on Brand Page Commitment
H4b Entertainment benefit has positive impact on Customer Word of Mouth
H4c Entertainment benefit has positive impact on Satisfaction
H5a Economic benefit has positive impact on Brand Page Commitment
H5b Economic benefit has positive impact on Customer Word of Mouth
H5c Economic benefit has positive impact on Satisfaction
Proposal model and hypotheses
2.7.1. Proposal model
Based on the foundations of former research, the model in the study of Gummerus, et al.
(2012) is mostly suitable to our objectives as stated above. We re-applied this model as
figured out below in the Vietnam airline industry context.

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Figure 2.1. The conceptual Model
2.7.2. Hypotheses summary
H1a. Community Engagement behavior has positive impact Social benefit
H1b: Community Engagement behavior has positive impact Entertainment benefit
H1c: Community Engagement behavior has positive impact Economic benefit
H2a: Transaction Engagement behavior has positive impact Social benefit
H2b: Transaction Engagement behavior has positive impact Entertainment benefit
H2c: Transaction Engagement behavior has positive impact Economic benefit
H3a Social benefit has positive impact on Customer Brand Page Commitment
H3b Social benefit has positive impact on Customer Word of Mouth
H3c Social benefit has positive impact on Customer Brand Page Commitment
H4a Entertainment benefit has positive impact on Brand Page Commitment
H4b Entertainment benefit has positive impact on Customer Word of Mouth

H4c Entertainment benefit has positive impact on Satisfaction
H5a Economic benefit has positive impact on Brand Page Commitment
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