Consumer Brand Engagement Positioning in Marketing Theory under a Service Dominant Logic Perspective

The paper is a theoretical contribution on the role of consumer brand engagement (CBE) in marketing theory and moves within the Service Dominant Logic paradigm. The paper aims to identify the distinctive positioning of consumer brand engagement topic in marketing literature filling a literature gap and contributing to a better definition of the concept useful also for a good managerial practice. Several Authors have investigated the interface between CBE and SDL (Merz and Vargo, 2009; Hollebeek 2013, Brodie, et al. 2006). However, still remain in marketing literature a certain confusion and overlapping among several research topics that probably derive from an unclear systematization of brand theory in particular that related to brand feelings (brand love, brand attachment, brand engagement) and consumer active role in Brand Equity Creation. The literature contribution on CBE suffer this limitations. As a consequence of that, it is very difficult to identify an effective scale measurement that measures CBE and not something else (brand experience, brand image, brand perceptions, consumer brand resistance, brand antagonism, and so on). This probably because CBE topic is still under-conceptualized and, consequently, under-investigated. Methodology/Research design/Approach for empirical investigation. The methodology of empirical investigation is qualitative (Gummesson, 2005; Cantone and Testa, 2011) and quantitative based on Multiple Components Analysis (MCA) protocol (Stewart, 1981)