Brand Echo Chambers

This project investigates how “brand echo chambers” form in consumers’ social media networks and how these environments shape engagement, sentiment, and advocacy toward brands. Using large-scale data, we develop new metrics of brand echo chambers that capture both the breadth of brand integration in personal networks and the exclusivity of brand-focused interactions. We investigate how echo chambers affect brand posts and mentions, brand discussions, competitor visibility, and consumer loyalty. The project leverages advanced computational methods, including text analysis and generative AI, to systematically measure these dynamics at scale. Findings will provide managers with actionable insights into tracking, predicting, and strategically managing consumer-brand relationships, justifying requested resources for data processing, analysis, and dissemination.

Workplan:
Jan–July: Initial data collection and computation; finalize echo-chamber metrics; conference presentations.

July–September: Build/validate echo-chamber indices; pilot text/sentiment models; scale analyses; apply generative AI to classify brand/competitor discourse; conference presentation.

September–December: Continue data collection, including a survey of social media users; hire an RA to support data and analysis; further conference presentations; manuscript write-up.