Abstract:
The purpose of this paper is to investigate through an empirical research the relationship between Customer
Engagement Behavior (CEB) and some of its alleged outcomes that include Benevolence/Trust, affective
commitment and future patronage in a service sector which is Higher Education. Thus, this research investigates
customer engagement constructs of conscious attention and emotional participation that lead to various favorable
behaviors by the customer, which in turn leads to favorable outcomes of benevolence, affective commitment and
future patronage. The researcher starts by a survey of literature which handles various aspects of CEB which
include: possible types of these behaviors, factors affecting CEB, outcomes of CEB and CEB as compared to
other marketing concepts. Next, the researcher proposes a model where engaged students (CE) will undertake
favorable behaviors (CEB) which in turn will lead to favorable outcomes of Benevolence/trust, future
patronage/repurchase intention and affective commitment. The researcher tests the model using Partial Least
Squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) and empirical data from a survey (self-administered
questionnaire) that was distributed among 5 faculties of one private university in Egypt based on a case study
approach. The results show that we accept the hypotheses of the model of the model yet the researcher suggests
application on other universities to further test the model. Moreover, the researcher invites further research of
other favorable outcomes of CEB as loyalty to be considered. The researcher also suggests an investigation of
unfavorable CEB as bad word of mouth (WoM) and harmful blogging or unfavorable reviews.
