A higher-order model of consumer brand engagement and its impact on loyalty intentions Abhishek Dwivedi n School of Management & Marketing, Charles Sturt University, PO Box 789, Albury, NSW 2640, Australia article info Article history: Received 27 October 2014 Received in revised form 2 February 2015 Accepted 17 February 2015 Keywords: Consumer brand engagement Vigor Dedication Absorption Loyalty abstract Consumer brand engagement is increasingly gaining popularity among practitioners and academics as a prominent consumer-brand relationship construct. The emergent literature on consumer brand en- gagement, largely conceptual, offers various definitions of the construct, though without much con- sensus. We offer a novel higher-order model of consumer brand engagement that we derive from or- ganizational psychology. We adapt the concept of employee engagement and examine its factorial va- lidity in a consumer-brand relationship context, defining consumer brand engagement as consumers' positive, fulfilling, brand-use-related state of mind that is characterized by vigor, dedication and ab- sorption. We develop and empirically test a three-dimensional model of brand engagement, outlining relevant antecedents and outcomes. More importantly, we assess the managerial utility of consumer brand engagement by examining its impact on consumer loyalty intentions. We additionally compare the explanatory capability of brand engagement relative to traditional consumer judgments of value, quality and satisfaction. A survey of 408 mobile phone consumers from India provided data for empirical testing. The results support the three-dimensional factor structure of consumer brand engagement. Brand en- gagement not only exerts a significant impact on loyalty intentions, but also explains significantly more variation in the outcome in addition to the variation explained jointly by value, quality and satisfaction. Theoretically, we offer a holistic multi-dimensional measure of consumer brand engagement, and ex- amine key nomological relationships. Managerially, we demonstrate the explanatory capability of brand engagement in explaining consumer loyalty intentions, offering a useful tool in the relationship-building repertoire of managers. & 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction The consumer-brand relationship paradigm has generated substantial academic interest in understanding various forms of consumers' relational behaviors with brands. Consumer brand engagement has emerged as a prominent construct in recent years and is increasingly gaining currency among practitioners and academics, mainly due to its potential to affect consumer behavior (Gambetti and Graffigna, 2010). A survey of 124 Chief Marketing Officers revealed that developing brand engagement among con- sumers figured among top marketing priorities (Burt, 2013). Si- milarly, academic interest on the concept has accelerated (Brodie et al., 2011; Hollebeek, 2011; Vivek et al., 2012). However, much remains to be understood about the construct. The nature of consumer brand engagement per se remains contentious. For in- stance, it is debatable whether consumer brand engagement is largely behavioral (van Doorn et al., 2010) or has additional emotional and cognitive aspects (Hollebeek, 2011). Additionally, the nomological network of the construct is embryonic and largely conceptual (Brodie et al., 2011; Vivek et al., 2012), thus creating opportunities to empirically examine key relationships that have theoretical and managerial implications. We offer two contributions to the emergent literature on consumer brand engagement. First, we empirically examine the factorial validity of a second-order model of consumer brand engagement that is novel to the domain of consumer-brand relationships. We derive our conceptualization of consumer brand engagement from the domain of organizational psychology (Schaufeli et al., 2002; Sonnentag, 2003), conceiving consumer brand engagement as consumers' positive, fulfilling, brand-use- related state of mind that is characterized by vigor, dedication and absorption. In the context of consumer-brand relationships, vigor denotes high levels of energy and mental resilience when inter- acting with a brand, and the consumer willingness and the ability to invest effort in such interactions (Schaufeli et al., 2002). Ded- ication refers to a sense of significance, enthusiasm, inspiration, Contents lists available at ScienceDirect journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jretconser Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jretconser.2015.02.007 0969-6989/& 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. n Fax: þ61 2 60519815. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services 24 (2015) 100–109