Improving Influencer Recommendation with Brand Portfolio (with Bindan Zhang and Jeremy Yang)
Selecting the right influencers is crucial for the success of influencer marketing campaigns. As a result, many platforms recommend influencers to brands based on their fit, follower count, and engagement rate. In this paper, we build a graph-based recommender system using Instagram data to investigate if an influencer’s past brand collaborations, or her brand portfolio, has additional predictive power of campaign performance in the future. We measure the relationship between brands along the dimensions of competition and image with brand bios and test two potential mechanisms. First, how does the number and variety of brands in the portfolio predict performance? Second, how does the relationship between the focal brand and brands in the portfolio predict performance? For practical implications, we discuss how platforms and brands can leverage influencers’ brand portfolios to improve the recommendation and selection, and how influencers can better manage their brand portfolios
Wellness-Oriented Marketing: The Role of Linguistic Style and Employee Well-Being in Driving Consumer Engagement (with Haotian Zhang, Luca Cascio Rizzo and Ram Janakiraman)
Wellness-oriented marketing has gained significant traction in recent years, with digital platforms serving as a key medium for firms to communicate their commitment to wellness efforts. While firm-generated content (FGC) plays a crucial role in shaping consumer perceptions, the impact of wellness-related messaging within FGC remains under-explored. By analyzing 202,651 social media posts from 417 firms in 2021, the authors examine the relationship between wellness-related content in FGC and consumer engagement. They also investigate the heterogeneous effects of three key moderators: firm popularity, firm type (hedonic vs. utilitarian), and internal employee well-being, measured using employee ratings from Indeed data. The findings reveal that wellness-oriented textual cues significantly influence engagement; however, this effect is not uniform across firm types. Hedonic firms experience a stronger impact from wellness messaging, whereas utilitarian firms do not see a comparable payoff. Additionally, firms that prioritize internal employee well-being, as reflected in workplace reviews, derive greater benefits from wellness-related messaging on social media. These insights suggest that firms should strategically align their wellness messaging with firm characteristics and internal workplace culture to maximize consumer engagement.
Pankhuri Malhotra 