Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Business Research journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jbusres Revisiting the consumer brand engagement concept Obinna O. Obilo a , Ellis Chefor b , Amin Saleh c, ⁎ a Assistant Professor of Marketing, Central Michigan University, Department of Marketing and HSA, 100 Smith Hall, Mt. Pleasant, MI, 48859, United States b Assistant Professor of Professional Sales, Illinois State University, College of Business, Department of Marketing, Campus Box 5590, Normal, IL 61790-5590, United States c Louisiana Tech University, College of Business, Department of Marketing and Analysis, 305 Wisteria St, Ruston, LA 71272, United States ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Engagement Consumer brand engagement Scale development Co-creation Brand identification Social media ABSTRACT Marketing researchers and practitioners almost unanimously agree that consumer engagement has major eco- nomic and social benefits. Many published works have attempted to conceptualize, develop, and validate measures of consumer engagement. One seminal study (Hollebeek, Glynn, & Brodie, 2014) developed a scale for consumer brand engagement (CBE) within the context of social media and has since become one of the most cited and employed measures of engagement. The purpose of the current study is to reinvestigate the validity of the CBE scale. We integrate views from marketing research and practice to introduce a new conceptualization of engagement. Examining the CBE scale through the lens of our new conceptualization, we find that, although reliable and valid as an instrument, it does not truly capture the engagement concept. Finally, we introduce and validate a new instrument that more comprehensively captures the engagement concept. 1. Introduction Rapid strides in information technology have resulted in the emer- gence of a multitude of social media, which in turn have transformed how firms communicate and create value for/with consumers (Kumar, 2018). The marketing discipline has similarly evolved its approach to customer management, moving from a transactional era, to a relational era, and now, adapting to the current era of engagement (Pansari & Kumar, 2017). Marketing practice and research currently reflect this customer engagement perspective, as this viewpoint has been crucial in gaining competitive advantage (Alvarez-Milán, Felix, Rauschnabel, & Hinsch, 2018; Amazon, 2019; Gallup, 2019; Kumar & Pansari, 2016) by positively influencing essential attitudinal and behavioral outcomes such as satisfaction (Brodie, Ilic, Juric, & Hollebeek, 2013), loyalty (Hollebeek, 2011; Shanahan, Tran, & Taylor, 2019), and brand usage (Harrigan, Evers, Miles, & Daly, 2018; Hollebeek et al., 2014). Despite the proliferation of conceptual and empirical engagement research (over 30 publications since 2010 in the Journal of Business Research alone), there is little consensus as to the true composition of the engagement concept (Beckers, van Doorn, & Verhoef, 2018; Mollen & Wilson, 2010) and how it should be measured (Baldus, Voorhees, & Calantone, 2015; Bruneau, 2018; Dessart, Veloutsou, & Morgan- Thomas, 2016; Hollebeek et al., 2014; Sprott, Czellar, & Spangenberg, 2009). The conceptualizations proffered in the extant research vary widely; running the gamut from simple, unidimensional, “brand as part of self” constructs (Sprott et al., 2009) to complex, octo-dimensional, multi-order constructs (Calder, Malthouse, & Schaedel, 2009). With over 1092 citations at the time of this writing, perhaps the closest work to consensus on consumer brand engagement (CBE), Hollebeek et al. (2014, pg. 154), defines the concept as “a consumer’s positively valenced brand-related cognitive, emotional, and behavioral activity during or related to focal consumer/brand interactions.” The authors develop a three-factor scale to measure this concept in the context of social media brands. This CBE scale has been adopted in several research endeavors; however, results from these studies are mixed regarding CBE’s convergent, discriminant, and nomological va- lidity. Given the more recently developed competing perspectives on en- gagement (Alvarez-Milán et al., 2018; Pansari & Kumar, 2017) and the rapidly growing popularity of CBE, we believe that a reassessment of CBE’s validity is well justified. Such a reassessment is important not only because there is evidence that many others are relying on the CBE scale, but also because it represents an issue with real economic and social consequences. The present study makes several important contributions. First, this study points to the obvious lack of consensus in the literature on what engagement is. Next, we address psychometric issues with the seminal CBE scale. Specifically, we demonstrate that CBE is not distinct from https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2019.12.023 Received 2 January 2019; Received in revised form 13 December 2019; Accepted 14 December 2019 ⁎ Corresponding author at: 107 Louanne Ave, Ruston, LA 71270, United States. E-mail addresses: obilo1o@cmich.edu (O.O. Obilo), aelli10@ilstu.edu (E. Chefor), mas070@latech.edu (A. Saleh). Journal of Business Research xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx 0148-2963/ © 2019 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Please cite this article as: Obinna O. Obilo, Ellis Chefor and Amin Saleh, Journal of Business Research, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2019.12.023