Customer journeys have become the state-of-the-art concept for understanding customer behaviors in a customer-centric way (Jaakkola and Terho, 2021; Becker et al., 2020; Akaka and Schau, 2019). Customer journeys are commonly defined as a series of firm- or offering-related touchpoints that customers interact with during their purchase and usage processes (Becker and Jaakkola, 2020; Lemon and Verhoef, 2016; Patrício et al., 2011). Customer journey research explicates two key phenomena relevant to marketing: customers’ purchase behaviors (Anderl et al., 2016; Li and Kannan, 2014) and customer experiences that are formed along their purchase and usage processes (Lemon and Verhoef, 2016; Meyer and Schwager, 2007). Customer journeys can thus be a critical driver of firm performance, generating considerable interest among scholars and consultants in the study and management of journeys (e.g. Homburg and Tischer, 2023; Kuehnl et al., 2019; Edelman and Singer, 2015; Rawson et al., 2013).

However, scholars are increasingly viewing the current journey literature as narrowly focused, calling for a broader perspective (e.g. Hamilton and Price, 2019; Akaka and Schau, 2019; Becker et al., 2020; Pizzutti et al., 2022; Trujillo-Torres et al., 2024). We address two specific limitations of the existing research. First, existing journey research has typically focused on a customer’s path to purchase, building on consumer decision-making models (Følstad and Kvale, 2018; Lemon and Verhoef, 2016). This perspective neglects many aspects of journeys that have relevance for firms but that are not anchored to a purchase decision. In reference to services, touchpoints related to service delivery and usage are typically critical for customer satisfaction and firm performance, and these occur after a purchase decision has been made (Rawson et al., 2013; Voorhees et al., 2017; Jaakkola and Terho, 2021). Consider for example a stay in a hotel or the use of mobile telephone services; here, selecting the service provider is only the start of the process. Additionally, situations where customers influence the firm beyond purchase are overlooked. For example, engaged consumers can invest considerable resources in the development of the firm’s offerings (Jaakkola and Alexander, 2014) or act as influential advocates – or adversaries – for a brand without making any purchases (Azer et al., 2023). This represents a serious gap in journey research, where the notion of customers’ engagement value is increasingly being highlighted, rendering purchase volume an increasingly insufficient measure (Kumar et al., 2010; Venkatesan, 2017; Harmeling et al., 2017). Thus, there is a need for a conceptualization of the engagement journey that is not centered on purchases.

Second, while the increasingly social and emancipated nature of customer journeys has been widely acknowledged (Baxendale et al., 2015; Halvorsrud et al., 2016; Hamilton et al., 2021), existing studies have remained preoccupied with firm-controlled touchpoints (Lemon and Verhoef, 2016; Voorhees et al., 2017). Thus, existing journey research has devoted scant attention to touchpoints across new technologies, platforms, and channels beyond firm control that may significantly affect customer journeys (Hamilton and Price, 2019; Kuehnl et al., 2019; Akaka and Schau, 2019; Wider et al., 2018). Indeed, Review Trackers (2018) indicated that more than 60% of consumers explored online reviews before visiting a business, and 94% considered the reviews a deciding factor in convincing them to avoid a particular provider. Post-pandemic, interactions with reviews have increased by up to 50% from pre-pandemic levels (Review Trackers, 2022). Thus, touchpoints where customers interact with each other are often critical in determining the direction or continuation of a customer journey with a provider, and these effects can spread rapidly in customer networks, fueled by the actions of engaged individuals (cf. Azer and Alexander, 2018).

In sum, the full spectrum of relevant customer insights cannot be captured via traditional purchase journey analysis, and perhaps the most important customer journeys remain poorly understood. To address these gaps, the purpose of this study is to develop the concept of engagement journeys and discuss their implications for journey design and management. We draw on customer engagement research, which explicates customer behaviors that relate to the firm but occur outside its direct influence (Brodie et al., 2011; Jaakkola and Alexander, 2014; Vivek et al., 2012). Engagement is inherently customer-driven, often exogenous to the firm and interactive in nature, accounting for behaviors at touchpoints beyond a firm’s control and for how customer journeys affect each other (Azer et al., 2023). Engagement is defined here as a “dynamic and iterative process that reflects actors’ dispositions to invest resources in their interactions with other connected actors in a service system” (Brodie et al., 2019, p. 2).
This study proposes a novel conceptualization of the engagement journey that breaks free from the purchase decision-making process. We conceptualize an engagement journey as the customer’s process of diverse brand-related resource investments in interactions with the brand/firm and/or other customers, reflecting the customer’s cognitive, emotional, and behavioral disposition. Despite the proliferation of both journey and engagement research, very few studies have considered the link between these concepts. For customer journey research, the present study offers a novel conceptualization of the journey that is applicable beyond the prevalent purchase decision-making focus and can account for thus far overlooked aspects, such as non-purchase journeys and the role of brand-related interactions in customer-owned and social or external touchpoints. We also outline how current views of journey management need to be renewed to account for engaged customers. For engagement research, this study offers insights into how the dynamic process of engagement can appear and how engagement journeys should be considered in firms’ engagement marketing efforts.

The study proceeds as follows. The next section reviews state-of-the-art research on customer journeys. Then we review the engagement research to identify existing insights into customer engagement and its manifestations, which offers implications for journey research. The subsequent section synthesizes insights from the customer journey and engagement literature by analyzing how engagement manifests across different types of touchpoints, resulting in a conceptualization of the engagement journey. These insights are discussed in relation to the current journey management orthodoxy to pinpoint the implications engagement journeys have on our current assumptions of journey management. Finally, we discuss the contributions and implications of this analysis for research and managerial practice.

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