Let's (re)locate digitally: spatial competition for users' engagement in the social media space

Online social environments provide attractive platforms for firms to connect and engage with consumers. The objective of this paper is to optimize marketing efforts by brands to improve engagement and market share in social media. To this end, we define and conceptualize the digital social media space using the concepts of homophily and social distance. For quantification purposes and a more tangible practical implementation we build on Huff's retail gravity model, which is transposed to the social media space. The model allows the calculation of the expected engagement and social media market participation at the brand level, based on the positioning of the brand and its’ competitors and the distribution of consumer activity in different social media, thus enabling the optimization of marketing efforts through digital (re-)location. The model is applied to leading brands in the athletic footwear market to test its robustness.