Yogyakarta — Customer engagement through digital platforms is increasingly becoming an important part of marketing strategies focused on building long-term relationships. This finding comes from research by Siswira Kurniastuti, Tony Wijaya, and Agung Utama from the Master of Management Program, Faculty of Economics and Business, Yogyakarta State University. Published in 2026, the study mapped the development of research on digital engagement in relationship-based marketing by analyzing 177 scientific articles indexed in Scopus. The findings reveal a strong connection between digital engagement, customer satisfaction, brand trust, and customer loyalty.
The development of information and communication technology has transformed the way companies interact with consumers. Relationships between brands and customers no longer take place only through physical stores or direct communication. They increasingly occur through social media, mobile applications, websites, online communities, and other digital platforms. These changes provide customers with more opportunities to interact, provide feedback, share experiences, and participate in creating value for brands.
In this context, digital engagement is more than simply how often consumers like, comment on, or view a company's content. It includes emotional, cognitive, and behavioral involvement when customers interact with brands through digital technology. Engaged customers may contribute to content, participate in brand communities, provide feedback, and voluntarily recommend products or services to others.
This concept is closely connected to relationship marketing, an approach that places long-term customer relationships at the center of marketing strategy. Unlike marketing focused mainly on immediate transactions, relationship marketing seeks to retain customers through trust, commitment, satisfaction, and loyalty. In the digital era, these principles are increasingly implemented through interactive channels that allow companies to respond to customers more quickly and personally.
Kurniastuti, Wijaya, and Utama found that research on digital engagement has grown rapidly, but the literature remains fragmented across different perspectives. Some previous studies focused mainly on consumer behavior in digital environments, while the relationships among digital engagement, trust, satisfaction, and loyalty were not always mapped comprehensively within a single relationship marketing framework.
To provide a broader picture, the researchers combined a Systematic Literature Review with bibliometric analysis. Data were obtained from the Scopus database using keywords related to customer engagement and digital engagement. The selection process followed the PRISMA framework. From an initial 9,724 documents, successive screening resulted in 177 articles that met the criteria for further analysis. The selected publications were peer-reviewed English-language journal articles, available in full text, relevant to the topic, and published between 2011 and 2025.
The researchers used VOSviewer to map relationships among concepts, authors, references, and research trends over time. Three main approaches were used: co-citation analysis to identify authors or references frequently cited together, co-occurrence analysis to identify keywords that frequently appeared together, and trend analysis to examine changes in research focus.
The results show that research on digital engagement has grown consistently over the past decade. The number of publications increased from 2018 and reached a peak in 2023, with 41 documents. Research on the topic was most concentrated in business and management, accounting for 24.8 percent, followed by social sciences at 19.6 percent and computer science at 12.2 percent. The findings demonstrate that digital engagement has become a multidisciplinary topic extending beyond marketing alone.
The keyword mapping produced six major clusters. One of the strongest clusters connects customer engagement, customer loyalty, relationship marketing, brand trust, and customer empowerment. Other clusters focus on the digital divide and social contexts, e-commerce and digital transactions, engagement technologies and media, decision-making, and customer participation in value creation.
The keyword density map further confirms that customer engagement, digital engagement, and customer satisfaction occupy central positions in the literature. Customer loyalty, co-creation, and relationship marketing also show high density. These findings indicate that digital customer engagement does not operate independently but is closely connected with customer experience, satisfaction, trust, and loyalty.
From an intellectual perspective, the study identified several influential works that form the foundation of research in this field. Studies by Van Doorn and colleagues in 2010, Brodie and colleagues in 2011, Hollebeek and colleagues in 2014, Lemon and Verhoef in 2016, and Sashi in 2012 were among the highly influential references in the analyzed literature. These works address customer engagement, customer experience, loyalty, and long-term buyer-seller relationships.
The focus of research has also changed alongside technological development. Earlier studies emphasized concepts such as customer relationship management, co-creation, relationship marketing, and customer engagement. Research later expanded toward customer satisfaction, loyalty, purchase intention, and value co-creation. More recent studies increasingly focus on digital engagement, connected learning, social engagement, virtual reality, artificial intelligence, and mobile phones.
For businesses, the findings suggest that building customer relationships in the digital era requires more than simply maintaining a presence on social media. Companies need to create digital experiences that are relevant, interactive, personalized, and responsive. These strategies can include personalized campaigns, digital reward programs, customer communities, and rapid responses supported by chatbots or AI technologies. Strong engagement can encourage customers to become more loyal and even act as brand advocates.
The study concludes that digital engagement has evolved into a strategic element of relationship marketing. It connects customer experiences with satisfaction, trust, and loyalty. The development of the field also suggests that future marketing strategies will increasingly rely on personalized, interactive, adaptive, and data-driven approaches.
Author Profiles
Siswira Kurniastuti — Master of Management, Faculty of Economics and Business, Yogyakarta State University.
Tony Wijaya — Master of Management, Faculty of Economics and Business, Yogyakarta State University.
Agung Utama — Master of Management, Faculty of Economics and Business, Yogyakarta State University.
Research Source
Article Title: Digital Engagement in Relationship Marketing: A Hybrid Systematic Review and Bibliometric Mapping of Conceptual and Intellectual Structures
Journal: East Asian Journal of Multidisciplinary Research (EAJMR), Vol. 5 No. 8, 2026, pp. 3363–3382.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.55927/eajmr.v5i8.266
Journal Website: https://journaleajmr.my.id/index.php/eajmr
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