Interactive brand experience pathways to customer-brand engagement and value co-creation

Purpose The paper aims to address a question posed by Ruth Bolton (2011):“What kinds of interactive experiences lead to favourable customer engagement rates”? Design/methodology/approach Building on the literature, the paper develops different interactive experience pathways for both functional and hedonic brands. Findings The different pathways are developed formally for both brand types. Different facets of brand experience and different facets of interactivity are entailed for each brand type. The models are illustrated with actual brands. Research limitations/implications The study is primarily conceptual and requires empirical testing. The purpose of the paper is to motivate academics to explore the nature of interactive experiences in whatever way they choose. Practical implications The different interactive experience pathways between functional and hedonic brands imply different engagement and co-creation strategies by firms. Generally, a richer set of engagement options are relevant to the hedonic brand. However, using the Domino’s Pizza example, the paper suggests that functional brands can extend their repertoire of engagement tools by borrowing inspiration from the hedonic brands. Social implications There is a major social or community aspect to interactive experiences. Moreover, some of the brands used as examples in the paper, such as Patagonia, have major social or environmental impacts. Originality/value This original research pioneers the discovery and coding of the nature of interactive brand experiences. Hitherto, the domain can be construed as the idiomatic, “elephant in the room”, an important topic but not discussed. The conversation has now begun.