The role of the partner brand’s social media power in brand alliances

Abstract

Managers frequently seek strategies to profit systematically from social media to increase product sales. By forming a brand alliance, they can acquire an installed social media base from a partner brand in an attempt to boost the sales of their composite products. Drawing from power theory, this article develops a conceptual model of the influence of the social media power of partner brands on brand alliance success. The proposed framework details the partner brand’s social media power potential (size and activity of the social media network), social media power exertion (different posting behaviors and comments), and their interaction. The authors test this framework with an extensive data set from the film industry, in which films function as composite products and actors represent partner brands. The data set features 442 movies, including 1,318 actor–movie combinations and weekly social media data (including 41,547 coded Facebook posts). The authors apply a linear mixed-effects model, in which they account for endogeneity concerns. The partner brand’s social media power potential, power exertion, and their interaction can all lead to higher composite product sales. By coding different types of product-related posts, this article provides estimates of their varying monetary value.