Capturing emotions and experiences through customer engagement to enhance value co-creation: the Ichnusa on-line brand community’s case study

Objectives. This study aims to explore how business-to-consumer interactions within an on-line brand community leverage and capture consumers’ emotions and experiences to performing value co-creation processes in the realm ofncustomer engagement theory. Methodology. Given to the explorative nature of the research, the study adopts a qualitative methodology through a case study method. In particular, it focuses on Birra Ichnusa Facebook page in order to investigate how the brand fosters the logic of value co-creation by leveraging on consumers’ emotions and experiences within its on-line community. Findings. The brand largely adopts different types of “emotional messages” and “experiential messages”, strictly correlated in order to deliver memorable and unique consumer experiences of value co-creation. Research limits. This study proposes a first approach to capture the complexity of consumers’ emotions and experiences within the customer engagement theoretical framework in order to explore the value co-creation within online brand communities. In turn, such research will require further theoretical contributions and refinements as well asnappropriate empirical tests. Practical implications. This study may represent a useful framework for managers and decision makers to better understand the strategic advantages which can derive from leveraging on consumers’ deeper emotions and experiencesnwithin customer engagement practices. Originality of the study. This study analyses the concept of value co-creation from a still little explored perspective: the emotional and experiential dynamics with reference to a very original context represented by an online brand community of food and beverage. On doing this, it deals with the validation and enrichment of the theoreticalnfoundations of customer engagement