Leveraging Cofollowership Patterns on Social Media to Identify Brand Alliance Opportunities
提出一种基于Twitter关注数据的新方法，通过分析品牌间的共同关注模式来识别联合品牌和品牌延伸机会，并引入“超越性”指标衡量品牌在新类别中的受众重叠程度。
The use of cobranding and brand extension strategies to access new markets has been a topic of significant interest. However, surprisingly few studies have examined cross-category connections of brands using publicly available digital footprints. In this study, the authors introduce a new, scalable automated approach for identifying potential cobranding and brand extension opportunities using brand networks derived from publicly available Twitter followership data. The digital user–brand relationship, established through followership activity, is regarded as an expression of interest toward the brand. Common followership patterns between brands are then extracted to capture cointerest between those brands’ audience. By utilizing the cointerest patterns, the approach aims to derive cross-category brand–brand and brand–category connections, which can serve as important measures for assessing cobranding and extensions opportunities. This article introduces a new construct, transcendence, which measures the extent to which a brand’s followers overlap with those of other brands in a new category. The analysis is conducted at different points in time to help managers track shifts in brand transcendence.