Proactive and Collaborative Strategies to Boost Customer-brand Engagement and Experience: A Complexity Theory Approach

The online grocery industry’s swift expansion and intense competition underscore the urgency to tackle sustainable business and cost issues while adapting to consumer trends requires higher prices for continued profit. Utilizing complexity theory, the present study aims to explore the impact of proactive and collaborative strategies on customer-brand engagement and experience, ultimately fostering an increased willingness to pay a premium. Accordingly, the results (n = 406) show that proactive customer orientation and value co-creation significantly increase the customer experience and foster higher levels of customer-brand engagement, ultimately increasing willingness to pay more. Notably, the mediation analysis reveals that customer-brand engagement serves as a mediating factor in the relationship between customer experience and the willingness to pay more. This study contributes to the online grocery shopping literature by integrating proactive and collaborative strategies and investigates customer experience and engagement through the lens of complexity theory.