According to the service-dominant logic (SDL) (Vargo and Lusch, 2004), customers are not passive respondents but are active value creators, acting as resource integrators and contributing to value creation by integrating physical, social and cultural resources. By engaging customers in value creation, service firms can create a sustainable competitive advantage (Xie et al., 2008; Yi and Gong, 2013). Researchers have developed a framework that fully examines customer engagement behavior, which includes customer loyalty, word of mouth, recommendations and helping (van Doorn et al., 2010). Prior work has also focused on multi-foci customer engagement behaviors that target the firm, employees, other customers (Guo et al., 2013; Mende and van Doorn, 2015; Verleye et al., 2014), and more recently, several researchers have further examined customer engagement behavior toward the brand (Baldus et al., 2015; Merz et al., 2009; Wirtz et al., 2013). Exploration of customer brand engagement behavior is important because customers could serve as brand missionaries, become less likely to switch brands and provide feedback for brand management, creating a sustainable competitive advantage. Given the dramatic technology-led changes in the marketplace (e.g. advances in the internet, social media and mobile technologies), researchers are interested in understanding the implications of online brand communities (OBCs) (Wirtz et al., 2013). Compared to offline brand communities, OBCs enable customers to share their brand experiences with others more easily and frequently owing to the low cost of interaction with others (Shang et al., 2006). Accordingly, customer brand engagement behavior in OBCs has been well documented (Algesheimer et al., 2010; Steinmann et al., 2015; Teichmann et al., 2015; Wirtz et al., 2013). For instance, prior studies have explored the key dimensions of customer brand engagement behavior in OBCs (Hollebeek, 2011a, 2011b; Hollebeek and Chen, 2014). In addition, several researchers have proposed a conceptual framework that extends the understanding of OBCs and customer brand engagement behavior (Brodie et al., 2013; Wirtz et al., 2013), and academics have attempted to develop a reliable and valid measure of customer brand engagement behavior in OBCs (Baldus et al., 2015; Hollebeek et al., 2014). However, despite the growing scholarly interest in service marketing research addressing customer brand engagement behavior in OBCs, studies to date have been predominantly exploratory in nature, resulting in a lack of empirical research in this area. In particular, past work fails to capture the complexity of motivation driving customer engagement in the OBCs (Baldus et al., 2015).