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1. Introduction
Consumer–brand engagement (CBE) is deemed a critical factor for building firms' competitive advantage within markets (Nysveen and Pedersen, 2014). Regarded as a key marketing research priority (MSI, 2018). CBE refers to “consumers' brand-related cognitive, emotional and behavioural activity related to focal brand interactions” (Hollebeek et al., 2014, p. 149). CBE is conceptualized as a psychological state that involves consumers' passion for the brand, arising from the strength of consumer–brand interactions (Brodie et al., 2011).
The need to manage CBE strategically justifies attention on how CBE is formed, nurtured and sustained (Calder et al., 2016) and on its implications for behavioural outcomes (Hollebeek et al., 2014), namely consumer co-creation and repurchase intention. Co-creation involves consumers' potential to help shape the brand (France et al., 2015), seen as critical for brand success (Ind and Coates, 2013) by strengthening repurchase intention. The importance of repurchase intention is second only to actual purchase (Cobb-Walgren et al., 1995; Morrison, 1979).
Notwithstanding, intelligence on how to facilitate consumer–brand interactions, hence strengthening consumers' psychological engagement with the brand and their co-creation intention, remains mostly undeveloped (France et al., 2018). With the advancement of social media, marketers increasingly use social-media brand communication to evoke consumer–brand interaction to achieve positive business outcomes (Cheung et al., 2019). Growing awareness about the potential brand-building benefits of using social media calls for more research to guide marketers in a digital world (Hudson et al., 2016), strengthening the importance of enhanced brand interactivity on social-media platforms (Kim and Lee, 2019; Ramadan et al., 2018). This study answers Bolton's (2011) call for empirical research on how firms should facilitate brand interactivity to strengthen CBE, value co-creation and repurchase intention. Bolton's call warrants scholarly attention to brand interactivity within social media, regarded as one of the most useful platforms in facilitating brand interactivity, driving CBE and strengthening consumers' value co-creation and repurchase intention (Kim and Lee, 2019; Merrilees, 2016).
Brand interactivity within social media is an important but relatively new marketing-strategy area, and understanding of how it influences CBE and co-creation is limited (Dessart et al., 2015; Galvagno and Dalli, 2014). Accordingly, this study examines the role of brand interactivity within social media on CBE, value co-creation...