We extend the discourse on actor engagement by arguing that the ‘actor’ should be viewed both as a single-actor (humans or machines) and a group of actors (collectives or organizations), and that engagement implies both exchange-based and non-exchange-based resource contributions, which are facilitated by dispositions, formed partly by actor specific characteristics and partly by the institutional and organizational arrangements prevalent in the context in which the resource contributions occur. We further show how the resource contributions, combined with other resources, improve resource density and, thus, drive value creation. This mechanism can be the foundation for ‘economies of actor engagement’; focal actors can achieve increasing returns by mobilizing actor engagement. Building on this, we argue that actor engagement is central for market-shaping strategies that aim for market innovations, which we define as the emergence and institutionalization of resource linkages that improve resource density and, hence, value creation in a market. Finally, we suggest that the dramatic shifts that we see in the operating environment are elevating the role of actor engagement, making the management of actor engagement a strategic priority.

Introduction

Research on engagement within the marketing discipline has developed customer engagement conceptualizations (Brodie, Hollebeek, Jurić, & Ilić, ۲۰۱۱), explored customer engagement’s role in nomological networks (Brodie, Fehrer, Jaakkola, Hollebeek, & Conduit, 2016; Kumar & Pansari, 2016), described the role of engagement in service systems (Chandler & Lusch, 2015), and identified the contribution of engagement on a systemic level (Jaakkola & Alexander, 2014). Recently the discourse has developed along four trajectories. First, building on the idea of generic actors (Vargo & Lusch, 2011), research is increasingly focusing on actor engagement rather than customer engagement (Storbacka, Brodie, Böhmann, Maglio, & Nenonen, 2016). Second, ideas related to collective (Kleinaltenkamp, Karpen, Plewa, Jaakkola, & Conduit, 2019) or multi-actor (Li, Juric, & Brodie, 2017) engagement in networks (Verleye, Gemmel, & Rangarajan, 2014) illustrates how actors are connected and how these connections drive engagement behaviours. Third, informed by the realization that value creation happens in a systemic context, literature is making attempts to be liberated from a dyadic view (Alexander, Jaakkola, & Hollebeek, 2018), thus recognizing how institutional contexts influence actor engagement. Finally, although most of the research so far has been descriptive in nature (i.e., focusing on delineating what engagement is), there are recent examples of more prescriptive research, such as Harmeling, Moffett, Arnold, and Carlson (2017), who suggest that firms need to develop “engagement marketing” which aims to motivate, empower, and measure customer contributions to the marketing function.