Service marketing mix and customer engagement: A meta-analysis

Service brands employ two primary strategies to promote customer engagement (CE). The first is customer engagement marketing, which involves deliberate tactics, such as contests or brand selfies, designed to encourage customers to dedicate resources and interact with the brand. The second strategy relies on traditional marketing approaches, which, rather than actively promoting CE, create conditions that enable CE to occur organically through positive product or brand experiences. Research suggests that traditional strategies can sometimes be more effective than customer engagement marketing in driving CE. Despite the significance of services in the global economy, little research examines the impact of the service marketing mix (SMM) on the organic development of CE. This meta-analysis quantifies the unified direct effect of SMM elements on different dimensions of CE using 1,188 individual effect sizes from 156 research papers, representing a cumulative sample of 77,843 respondents. Results reveal that the ‘product’ and ‘people’ elements of the SMM exert the strongest influence across most CE dimensions, while ‘price’ and ‘promotion’ demonstrate lower impact. ‘Physical evidence’, ‘place’, and ‘process’ elements of the mix exhibit varying effects across dimensions. For deeper insight, we analyze how conceptual moderators (industry type, firm size, geographic location, and business context) and methodological moderators (data collection approach and sample type) influence the direct effects. Our analysis reveals significant differences based on firm size, industry type, study entity, business context and location. We conclude with theoretical implications and managerial guidance for optimizing investments in the SMM to enhance CE.