Customer engagement with digitalized interactive platforms in retailing

Digitalized interactive platforms (DIPs) such as Apple watch, Starbucks apps and Nike+ have seen enormous growth. This study empirically investigates the antecedents and consequences of customer engagement in a digitalized interactive platform of an online shoe retailing start-up. Specifically, we integrate service-dominant logic and self-determination theory to explore the complex relationships between human psychological needs, customer engagement and subjective well-being. We hypothesise that, in case of digitalized interactive platforms, the direct relationship between human psychological needs satisfaction (autonomy, relatedness and competence) and subjective well-being is mediated by customer engagement (cognitive, affective and behavioral). We applied a hybrid SEM-ANN approach to unravel the relationships. Findings show that autonomy and competence have significant relationships with all the dimensions of customer engagement (cognitive, affective and behavioral). Results also show that subjective well-being is not influenced by cognitive engagement but is influenced by affective and behavioral engagement. Theoretical and managerial contributions are discussed.