The study draws upon an existing conceptual model of customer engagement and examines how customer and firm based factors are related to customer engagement with a focus on the airline industry. Customer-based factors included in this study are brand experience and brand love; whereas firm-based factors are inflight service quality. The data were collected in one of European airports. The results show that customer-based factors are significantly related to customer engagement. In particular brand experience exerts significant direct and indirect effects on customer engagement. Whilst it does enhance passengers’ brand experience, particularly the service by flight attendants, inflight service quality has a minimal effect on customer engagement. The implications of the findings are offered for researchers and practitioners to conclude the paper.

Over the last decade customer engagement research has been popularising the marketing literature. The relative nascence has prompted researchers to delve into its conceptualisation and operationalisation of this concept (e.g. Brodie et al., 2011; Van Doorn et al., 2010; Verhoef et al., 2010). However, its popularity is mostly attributed to the supposedly outcomes for business organizations such as buyer-seller relationships (Sashi, 2012), customer purchase and loyalty behaviours (e.g. Prentice et al., 2018; Vivek et al., 2012). In addition to organizational outcomes, customer engagement likely produces positive customer-related and other social consequences (Van Doorn et al., 2010). These outcomes form impetus to investigate the drivers or antecedents of customer engagement. Van Doorn et al. (2010) proposed three broad categories of antecedents: customer, firm, and context-based factors. Exiting empirical research in this area is rather limited. Recently Prentice and colleagues (Prentice and Loureiro, 2017; Prentice et al., 2018) approached from customers’ perspective and examined how customers’ psychological desire, perceived benefits and social values influence their engagement with the brand and the organization. Prentice et al. (2018) contend that customer-based antecedents are more reflective of their genuine and volitional engagement, which leads to positive organizational outcomes (e.g. purchase and loyalty). On the other hand, to enhance and warrant customer engagement with a brand, it is also imperative for the brand organization to make deliberate marketing efforts such as providing quality services. Research to date has not provided empirical evidence on how customer and firm-based factors affect customer engagement respectively and conjunctively. Understanding this relationship would facilitate firms identifying more appropriate means to engage customers for optimal business outcomes for the brand organization. This study sheds light on this and approaches from both customers’ and firms’ perspective to understand their respective influence on customer engagement with a brand.