Understanding customer engagement and social media activities in tourism: A latent profile analysis and cross-validation

Abstract

Customer engagement has gained noteworthy attention among academics and practitioners over the last decade. Two studies employ latent profile analysis (LPA), a person-centered approach, to uncover discrete customer subgroups with similar profiles based on multiple customer engagement dimensions and relate these LPA groups to brand loyalty. Study 1 identifies four latent classes of airline and hotel customers. Customer engagement dimension scores inform four class profiles: enthusiastic, reserved, unpassionate, and disengaged. Results show a significant association between the latent profiles and customer participation in customer engagement activities. Interestingly, the results indicate that highly engaged customers do not necessarily participate in cyberspace-related customer engagement activities; instead, they participate more often in traditional, offline customer engagement activities. Study 2 validates these findings in a tourism destination context. The consistent findings across the two studies challenge the customer engagement literature’s general assumption linking customer engagement and consumer participation in social media.