Over the last decade, Gamification has been identified as one of the most prominent marketing initiatives to engage customers in the creation of more desirable and unique offerings. Adding Gamification into offerings allows customers to socially interact, share information and co-create experiences. Previous literature have focused on examining existing customers in the post first experience phase, thus leaving non-customers' willingness to engage in Gamification initiatives as an unexplored phenomena. As the ability to attract non-customers is identified to be a major source of business growth, the insights of what drives engagement of non-customers to eventually become new customers through the application of Gamification is vital for furthering the understanding in the research field.  Drawing on three types of gamified settings, (Personal, Competitive and Collaborative) this thesis aims to contribute with a better understanding on the relationship between Customer Engagement and Gamification. A quantitative research approach with a quasi-experimental design was applied, generating data from 379 respondents on a fictitious gamified app. The empirical findings contribute to existing literature by providing guidance on how to engage non-customers through Gamification offerings. Results indicated that non-customers are more likely to engage in Competitive and Collaborative Gamifications rather than Personal Gamification. Therefore, this thesis implies that engagement of non-customers differs based on what kind of Gamification is being offered.

With the constant changes in society, the way companies market themselves has changed and customer engagement, relationships and transparency has become a more important factor. Significantly in how businesses should conduct their business to create as much value as possible. And through this ever-changing environment in which retail exists, flexibility and the need for responsiveness is key where co-creational strategies can help a long way in opening up companies to reach, create and maintain good relationships through communication. The qualitative research method of a case study with semi-structured interviews was conducted to gather empirical findings for this study. The interviews were conducted with five employees of a family owned retail business to obtain a full perspective and understanding of their work towards customer engagement and co-creation. The authors of this thesis have adopted a deductive approach in this thesis. The thesis conclusion shows several reasons why co-creation strategies could amplify engagement and how the company needs to be aware and acknowledge their customers, to further build relationships. Findings indicate that a more structured approach is needed for their social media communication platforms. Moreover, it is important to note that this research is conducted from the companies’ perspective. Lastly, it is important to recognize the dynamics and reputation of the family business, as local status and size influence the overall experience and view of the company.

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For companies that supply a service to their customers, there will always be a difference in engagement from customer to customer. Some customers might have created an account, they might also have a paid subscription, or they neither have an account nor are a subscriber. Meaning that they only interact with the free content provided. Looking at this from the perspective of the company, a more engaged customer will generate more value than one less engaged. Therefore, it would be beneficial to try and understand why some customers are more engaged than others. This project purpose is to create a customer relationship management (CRM) pipeline for determining what it is that make some users more engaged with a service than other. The findings will be presented to Bonnier that they may use to try and increase customer engagement across the board. This is achieved by clustering users based on their recency, frequency, and volume (RFV) data with the help of two clustering algorithms. The clustering algorithms are evaluated to detriment which is more suited as well as to determine the optimal number of clusters. Lastly the clusters are analysed on different metrics connected to the users as well as to the articles they read. The results show some implications into what makes some users more engaged. It’s also concluded that more clustering and analysis would be needed to get even more insight into what leads to more customer engagement.

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Yes / Organizations worldwide are becoming more interested in utilizing social media applications to enhance their marketing capabilities. One of the main fruits of integrating social media applications into the marketing, information technology and information systems areas is social customer relationship management (SCRM). SCRM has been the focus of attention for both marketing academics and practitioners. However, as this area is quite new, there is a need to propose a theoretical foundation explaining how using social media platforms for SCRM systems could predict customer engagement and customer relationship performance. Three main factors, i.e. social media use, a customer-centric management system, and relationship marketing orientation, are considered as key predictors of SCRM. SCRM is proposed as a key determinant of customer engagement, which in turn affects customer relationship performance. The proposed research methodology suggests conducting a quantitative study to validate the current study model. Further discussion regarding the research contribution and main limitations are provided in the last sections.

Yes / Despite the surge of literature on customer engagement (CE) in social media, few studies shed light on how to leverage CE to improve firms’ operational efficiency. This research proposes a fresh framework using social media data to improve demand forecasting accuracy, resulting in a cost-efficient inventory control strategy. Drawing upon the resource mobilization perspective in particular, this research quantifies the construct of CE from the view of input–output efficiency evaluation using the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) model, and then leverages CE to forecast consumer online demand and reconfigure inventory management strategy. Using a 71-week data set from a social commerce start-up in China, this research shows that this new framework dramatically increases demand forecasting accuracy and reduces operational costs in inventory management. This study contributes to the literature by demonstrating the value of social media data in improving operational efficiency, particularly regarding inventory management. / National Natural Science Foundation of China (Project No. 71671152)

Försäkringar och försäkringsbolag har stor betydelse för det moderna samhället när det kommer till trygghet och utveckling, både för privatpersoner och företag. Trots detta har försäkringsbranschen fått relativt lite uppmärksamhet inom forskningen, inte minst inom företagsekonomi. I en tid av digitalisering står försäkringsbolagen dessutom inför stora utmaningar, bland annat relaterat till lojalitet. Syftet med denna studie är därför att skapaförståelse kring hur digitalisering påverkar lojaliteten i försäkringsbranschen, huruvida kunder är lojala mot sina försäkringsbolag och ur ett kundperspektiv definiera möjliga påverkansfaktorer för lojalitet i en tid av digitalisering. Kopplingar görs till begreppet customer engagement för att analysera dess relation till lojalitet bland kunder i försäkringsbranschen. Studien genomförs genom tio kvalitativa samtalsintervjuer med svenska försäkringskunder i åldrarna 23 till 79 år. Resultaten visar att försäkringskunderna föredrar mänsklig kontakt över digital kontakt för att känna både förtroende och lojalitet. Sju faktorer som påverkar lojaliteten har identifierats: service och bemötande, innehåll och villkor, erfarenheter, pris, bekvämlighet, personlig kontakt och bonusprogram. Slutsatserna som dras är att digitalisering har en negativ inverkan på lojaliteten, samt att både nivån av lojalitet och förekomsten av customer engagement är låg inom försäkringsbranschen ochtycks ha ett samband. Detta då de påverkas av liknande faktorer. Studiens resultat bekräftar tidigare forskning inom tre skilda områden: digitalisering, lojalitet och customer engagement, men bidrar även med nya insikter genom att begreppen kombineras och appliceras på ett nytt tillämpningsområde, försäkringsbranschen. Slutligen identifierar studien aktiviteter som kanvara till hjälp för att öka både kundlojaliteten och engagemanget bland kunderna hos svenska försäkringsbolag. / Insurances and insurance companies are of great importance to modern society when it comes to safety and development, for both individuals and companies. Despite this, the insurance industry has received a relatively small amount of attention in research, not only within business economics. Furthermore, in a time of digitalization, insurance companies are facingmajor challenges including those related to loyalty. The purpose of this study is therefore to acquire an understanding of how digitalization affects loyalty within the insurance industry, whether customers are loyal to their insurance companies, and from a customer perspective define possible influences for loyalty in a time of digitalization. Connections are made between loyalty and the concept of customer engagement to analyze the relationship betweenthe two among insurance customers. The study is conducted through ten qualitative interviews with Swedish insurance customers, aged 23 to 79 years old. The results show that insurance customers prefer human contact over digital contact in order to feel both trust and loyalty. Seven antecedents for loyalty have been identified: service and customer treatment, content and conditions, experiences, price, convenience, personal contacts, and bonusprograms. The conclusions are that digitalization has a negative impact on loyalty, and that the level of loyalty as well as the presence of customer engagement is low in the insurance industry and seems to be affected by similar factors. Therefore, the study suggests a connection between the two. The findings confirm previous research in three distinct areas: digitalization, loyalty and customer engagement, but also contributes to new insights bycombining and applying the concepts to a new field, the insurance industry. Finally, the study identifies activities that might be helpful for Swedish insurance companies in increasing both customer loyalty and customer engagement.

El conocimiento sobre la experiencia del cliente dentro de un contexto omnicanal es clave para determinar el nivel de compromiso del usuario hacia la empresa. En base a ello, el presente estudio abordará el omnichannel customer experience como la variable de interés principal analizando sus dimensiones para poder identificar su relación con el engagement. Asimismo, se adaptará a la realidad peruana en la industria que potencia la venta retail: los centros comerciales. Se realizará un estudio cuantitativo correlacional con 400 usuarios mediante el uso de encuestas online. Los resultados tendrán análisis bivariados y multivariados a través el programa estadístico SPSS y SmartPLS respectivamente. / Knowledge about the customer experience within an omnichannel context is key to determine the level of user engagement towards the company. Based on this, this study will focus on the omnichannel customer experience as the main variable of interest by analyzing its dimensions in order to identify its relationship with engagement. Likewise, it will be adapted to the Peruvian reality in the industry that boosts retail sales: shopping malls. A quantitative correlational study will be adopted with 400 users using online surveys. The results will have bivariate and multivariate analysis through the statistical software SPSS and SmartPLS respectively. / Trabajo de investigación

Social media marketing has gained tremendous attention in recent years and has become a powerful tool for companies, entrepreneurs and marketers to approach their target customers and cultivate longtime customer relationship with increased engagement. Despite the increasing investment on social media marketing and the increasingly important roles users play today, few of previous studies, however, were focused on the user behavior or the key factors that influence user engagement with brands on social media. We chose the technology acceptance model (TAM) and uses and gratifications theory (UGT) as our theoretical foundation to investigate user behaviors on social media and the factors that influence user engagement with brands. We tested our model in two different social media platforms; Facebook and Instagram. The conclusions were based on inputs from a survey with 126 respondents with diverse background and age groups. We tested the hypotheses utilizing statistic correlation analyses. Among the five researched variables, H1 (perceived usefulness) and H5 (motivation for information) are proved to be statically significant. Despite a number of limitations, our research sheds a light on the study of user behavior on social media platforms. Understanding user behavior is useful for entrepreneurs and marketers in shaping more efficient ways to target the right audience on the right platform(s) to achieve their marketing objectives by effectively exploiting the potential of social media.