An exploration of the impact of gender on customer engagement

Abstract

ABSTRACT Customer engagement has emerged as a noteworthy marketing concept, as several studies have linked it to desirable performance outcomes. However, extant customer engagement research offers few insights into gender’s direct impact across different customer engagement activities. To offer a detailed perspective of these effects, we examine these gender-related differences across four aspects of customer engagement: customer purchases, customer referrals, customer influence, and customer knowledge. To increase the explanatory power of our model and better parse out effect differences across women and men, we also explore the mediating role of perceived brand fairness and the moderating role of brand identification. The findings of our survey research (n = 250) show that females, relative to males, display higher levels of customer purchases, customer influence, and customer knowledge, but not customer referrals. Also, the results reveal that perceived brand fairness mediates the impact of gender on customer engagement. Further, brand identification negatively moderates the link between gender and perceived brand fairness. The results of this study carry noteworthy theoretical implications for customer engagement literature, social identity theory, and social role theory, as well as relevant managerial implications.