Title: Engaging customers in the emerging countries: is that different?

Authors: Darshan A. Desai

Addresses: Larry L. Luing School of Business, Berkeley College, 12 East 41 Street, New York, NY 10017, USA

Abstract: Service economy is growing in the emerging countries. With growing servitisation of products, customer engagement is becoming more crucial than ever before. Digital innovations are enhancing the opportunities to serve and engage the emerging countries customers. A myriad of organisations in various industries and countries feel the excitement to reap the opportunities to serve and engage the new breed of customer. However, in the academic literature, there is a lack of research on whether or not the contextual differences of an emerging country influence the customers' engagement. This paper aims to fill this gap by exploring how the contextual differences of emerging countries of Asia influence customer engagement. The paper also discusses implications of this research for organisations' strategic change management and customer engagement practices. When many organisations are investing and thinking about adopting the 'best practices' of a Western context to engage customers in the emerging countries of Asia, this research is crucial.

Keywords: customer engagement; emerging economies; developing countries; service economy; service-dominant logic; value co-creation; innovation; strategic change management; Asia.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSCM.2012.051849

International Journal of Strategic Change Management, 2012 Vol.4 No.3/4, pp.266 - 280

Published online: 31 Dec 2014 *

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