Proximity-based customer engagement in services and tourism destinations

Abstract

Customer engagement (CE) has recently become a popular perspective to study different relationships between customer and provider of products and of services. Though popular, CE studies have not taken into consideration location and proximity-based linkages between customers and providers. This study fills this gap combining CE discussions with proximity discussions using leisure centres and especially tourism as a case study example. According to results, in tourism destinations exist two kinds of customer engagement: place and proximity-based CE and 'typical' long-term CE with repeat customers. Place and proximity-based CE contains several levels: tourist is using her time in the same destination and tourist is consuming several times the same services in the destinations during her trip. That is, she is a repeat customer of certain services of destination during her trip - or even during her next trips to the destination. Basing on the noticed forms of repeat customers, this study provides three levels of customer engagement: macro, micro and hybrid-level CE. The outcomes show the possibilities to enlarge CE perspectives using leisure centre as an example towards the use web-based platforms, where the customer engagement is associated with the (virtual) proximity and system locked-in.