A NETWORK PERSPECTIVE ON CO-BRANDING CAMPAIGNS: EVIDENCE FROM THE FASHION INDUSTRY

Co-branding strategies have attracted increasing attention in the academic community over the last decades. Previous research privileged the analysis of co-branding campaigns by studying dyadic relationships between brands. Here, we take a network view to highlight the influence of the single companies' co-branding portfolio on partnership formation. From a theoretical perspective, the studies on co-branding analyze the process through which partner brands send a "signal" to consumers. Here, instead, we propose to look at partner selection as a process in which a signal, namely, the portfolio of previous co-branding campaigns, is sent from one brand to the others. In particular, we focus on the network of co-branding campaigns in the fashion industry, and look at the system through the lens of Signaling Theory. Indeed, we demonstrate that brand portfolio and network structure are predictive of further partnerships, and therefore, they exert a significant influence on the partner selection process.