Over the years, many researchers have tested theories about how marketing strategies can be used to engage customers to determine the differences between the developed and emerging market perspectives (Brodie et al., 2011). Traditional business techniques are rapidly evolving into electronic marketing and thus businesses need mechanisms to adopt these changes and achieve strategic performance (SP; Chakravarthy, 1986). In this scenario, e-commerce marketing capabilities (ECMCs) rapidly adopt such changes and foster customer engagement to support strategic performance, which is implemented through digital technologies (Palmu, 2011). ECMCs are linked to customer engagement and influence SP. ECMCs are described as the capability of a company to recognize, improve, and integrate e-commerce tactics into its product offerings to reach selected markets (Ardiansah et al., 2021, June). Because ECMCs involve a specific marketing capability, they are seen by several authors as being one of the processes that aid organizations in realizing their strategies (Yousaf and Majid, 2018). However, there is a need to explore how customer engagement can be enhanced through ECMCs in the digital age (Lane, 2009). In fact, firms can benefit from e-commerce technologies by engaging their customers and becoming more connected with other businesses (Czinkota et al., 2021).

Many other advantages can be gained by embracing e-commerce, such as an improved ability to personalize sales techniques, e.g., simplified electronic auditing, simplified information exchange with key stakeholders and order entry processing, shipment tracing, enhanced relations with existing clients, and better consumer awareness of products/services (Ubags et al., 2021). Such benefits demonstrate that there is a need for organizations to evolve from using traditional methods by embracing advanced techniques and leveraging ECMCs, as they help customers to achieve their goals through e-commerce capabilities and can, at the same time, enhance firms’ strategic performance (Ittner et al., 2003). Moreover, it is also important for practitioners and scholars to take into account the significant role played by customer engagement. This topic is a key driver of improving firms’ strategic performance through e-commerce marketing capabilities (Verhoef et al., 2010).

Due to the development of new digital technologies, customers are engaged in different ECMC e-business processes by liking, sharing and commenting on them (Micheli and Manzoni, 2010). Thus, this study analyzes the roles of ECMCs and customer engagement on firms’ strategic performance. In this respect, this paper sheds light on the fact that ECMCs increase customer engagement, which can improve service quality as well as strategic performance. Moreover, ECMCs bring about advancements in buying and selling processes while collecting information about the needs and expectations of consumers, which is key for improving strategic performance (Firoozi et al., 2020). Previous studies highlighted numerous outcomes of the use of ECMCs in business, e.g., performance (e.g., Gregory et al., 2019), management competency, and operations (Ramanathan et al., 2012); although its most important outcome—its effect on strategic performance—has not been fully investigated.

In fact, ECMCs have brought about changes in businesses globally and yield desirable benefits through increased customer engagement and earnings as well as reduced costs (Bowden, 2009). Tourism firms are bestowed with hydro and solar energy potential that, if exploited in a systematic manner, can ensure their energy security over time. The revolution of the traditional marketplace into e-marketing particularly requires e-commerce capabilities in a firm toward improving firms’ strategic performance (Atkinson et al., 1997; Fukuyama and Tan, 2022). ECMCs provide numerous opportunities to improve communication among distributors and buyers, purchasers, and suppliers. Recently, e-commerce capabilities have become an essential practice for engaging customers (Rahimi, 2021). The rapid development in e-commerce allows organizations to leverage new and specialized capabilities to achieve successful customer engagement (Kaplan, 2001). It is important for firms to implement unique e-commerce marketing capabilities to attain optimal strategic performance. Though, to the best of our knowledge, merely few studies have been carried out that examine developing capabilities such as e-commerce (Gregory et al., 2019), logistic capability (Cho et al., 2008) and seller marketing capability (Mu and Zhang, 2021) etc. but there remains a gap regarding the different mediation and moderation factors for enhancing and increasing strategic performance. However, no research has been conducted that mutually examine the impact of e-commerce marketing capabilities, customer engagement and IoT on strategic performance. Hence, to fill up this literature gap our study aims to examine the direct affect of ECMC through mediation of the customer engagement, and moderating role of IoT by choosing tourism firms as a case study. Exploring of all selected variables influence can support us in improved understanding of how ECMC influence strategic performance of tourism firms.

To fill this research gap and guide managers in this field, our study expands upon the reasons behind effective strategic performance, including e-commerce marketing capabilities, the IoT and customer engagement, then evaluates the impact of these strategies on strategic performance (see Figure 1). This study extends the literature on the impact of ECMCs and customer engagement into the field of strategic performance. To address this gap, this study has primary three objectives

The structure of this paper includes an introduction, a literature review, a presentation of our methodology and related findings, then a discussion and our conclusions. In the last section, the contributions and limitations of this study are summarized along with suggestions for future research. The next sections identify suitable approaches to and related research areas for analyzing the particular fields that will further develop the hypotheses of this study.

Virtually, psychological social support encourages in collaboration and support in apt emotional and physical activities to meet standards of the ethical consumption and natural environment via antecedent of the environmental knowledge. Nevertheless, this research model is unique and adds to previous literature information in these ways. Firstly, our study primary objective is to test that how environmental knowledge is directly associated with ethical consumption. Secondly, current study proposes to assess how CSR participation mediates in the linkage between environmental knowledge and ethical consumption. Thirdly, our study aims to investigate the level at which psychological social support can strengthen the linkage between environmental knowledge and ethical consumption. This research suggests some theoretical and practical bases or views for improvement of ethical consumption practices in tourism firms of Saudi Arabia. Current paper reminder is put as following; firstly, in section 2 we describe literature review of the selected study variables dependent on virtues of research constructs, secondly, in next section we explain methodology technique used in current research, in section 4 we include results and analysis and in last section we elucidate details of discussion and conclusion.

ECMCs refers to an organization’s ability to use the Internet to facilitate transactions, share information, improve customer service, and build up back end integration (Gregory et al., 2019). ECMCs are the unique IT abilities that reflect any organization’s capability to adopt e-commerce capabilities to manage inter-and intra-organizational operations—for instance, collaboration between business partners, services rendered, and outside organizational relationships (Tsiotsou et al., 2010). Customer engagement refers to the ethical and emotional relationship between the customer, a company and its brand. Highly engaged customers promote and buy products and thus show more loyalty and trust to the company and its brand (Bolton, 2011). Customer engagement is a combination of different cognitive aspects, such as being interested in the activities of a company, the behavioral perspective (e.g., participating in company processes), and emotional aspects related to a positive feeling about a company’s activities (Vivek et al., 2012). CE refers toa customer’s emotional, cognitive and behavioral existence in a brand community through online websites (Bijmolt et al., 2010). The IoT refers to a network of interrelated physical objects—both digital and mechanical machines—that are equipped with software, processing ability, sensors and other technologies for the receiving and sharing of data (Khan and Salah, 2018). Strategic performance shows business performance and competitive position in significant areas such as industry awareness, penetration, and responsiveness (De Waal, 2013).

This research is quantitative and random sampling method was used for the collection of data from different tourism firm. Data was collected through questionnaires with the help of the two research associates.

The study concluded the capabilities that facilitate firms’ collaboration with their customers and highlight the mediating role of customer engagement in the relationship between e-commerce marketing capabilities and strategic performance. Our study supports three hypotheses and highlights important implications for both theory and practice. The first hypothesis shows that e-commerce marketing capabilities positively affect strategic performance. These findings are supported in a general analysis and confirm the findings of previous studies. The findings corroborate that ECMCs not only improve strategic performance but also have an influence on business value, which is measured through both financial and nonfinancial factors (Dushnitsky et al., 2022). ECMCs help organizations to adapt to new environments by building, reconfiguring and integrating their external and internal competencies (Kotabe et al., 2008). We hypothesize that advancement in e-commerce marketing capabilities allow organizations to engage customers and improve their strategic performance. Our H2 is supported by empirical evidence that shows that customer engagement plays a mediating role in the relationship between ECMCs and strategic performance. Customer engagement plays an important role in achieving strategic performance among all firms. Few studies virtually investigate the effect of ECMCs on strategic performance via customer engagement (Yousaf and Majid, 2016). This customer engagement helps firms obtain knowledge of and information about opportunities to overcome achieve high strategic performance.

Customers are the main foundation for introducing new products and services (Jermsittiparsert et al., 2018). ECMCs connect business with customers on a round-the-clock basis, and such customer involvement facilitates enterprise in creating new ideas and responding to customer needs (Ramanathan, 2010). Firms derive benefits from customers by launching ECMCs to engage and cooperate with them (Chenhall, 2005). Customer engagement gives brands value and competitive advantages by sharing information and involving their customers (Stone et al., 2019). The findings support the argument that customer engagement is a key factor in achieving strategic performance. H3 in this study considered the mediating role of the IoT in the relationship between e-commerce marketing capabilities and customer engagement. Organizations attract customers through e-commerce capabilities when IoT applications are employed and customers act as a source of information. The results corroborate the view that the IoT is an essential component in businesses now because all businesses are online and it plays a strong role in the relationship between customers and the firm (Wheelus and Zhu, 2020). When customers feel safe and protected, they are more willing to provide their personal details (Moliner et al., 2018). The IoT has broad scope, which boosts growth in the digital economy and brings about advanced opportunities, new abilities, architectures and a new service model that facilitates communication among devices all over the globe (Madakam et al., 2015). The IoT strengthens the relationship between ECMCs and customer engagement to form independent hierarchical structures. The IoT strengthens ECMCs and customer relations by engaging customers in mutual dialogue.

The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article will be made available by the authors, without undue reservation.

Ethical review and approval was not required for the study on human participants in accordance with the local legislation and institutional requirements. Written informed consent from the patients/participants or patients/participants legal guardian/next of kin was not required to participate in this study in accordance with the national legislation and the institutional requirements.

JZ wrote the manuscript and was responsible for funding matters. PZ collected the data and designed the methodology and estimation. All authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.

The paper is sponsored by the Research on the construction of Teaching Quality Assurance System in application-oriented universities based on PDCA cycle model. Project number: 2021ZC042.

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.