Experiential Engagement: A Scale for Experiential Contexts

ABSTRACT In marketing, engagement has been discussed as context contingent, spurring proliferation of context‐specific engagement scales. While experiential contexts (e.g., music, the arts, sports) exhibit differences, they also hold similar characteristics (e.g., behavioral participation, feelings of connectedness, meaningful interaction) that provide the basis for experiential engagement across contexts. A scale that captures experiential engagement is needed due to the growth of embedded marketing strategies such as sponsorship, brand placement, and influencer marketing, where context engagement is relevant to communication success. Following a systematic literature review of 25 engagement scale papers, we conceptualize experiential engagement, then develop and test a six‐item measure. In Studies 1–3, we test construct validity, demonstrating the value of experiential engagement in broad contexts of general sport, popular music, as well as more narrowly in track and field. In Study 4, we test experiential engagement against sport involvement and sports fandom self‐perception in explaining sport sponsor outcomes. We find experiential engagement has a significant, positive relationship with sponsor brand word of mouth and brand equity and performs better than sport involvement and sports fandom self‐perception. In sum, we conceptualize experiential engagement as a broad, general construct, and provide support for the validity of our scale that measures it.