Consumer Interest in Major League Baseball: An Analytical Modeling of Twitter

Understanding how consumers interact with sport brands on digital platforms is of increasing importance to the sport industry. In this study, through a nexus of consumer behavior and economic literatures, the examination focuses on consumer interest in major league baseball teams on social media platforms from July 2013 to June 2014. Specifically, two generalized least squares regression models were used that considered a variety of factors, including market characteristics, scheduling, and social media use and management. The findings display varying results of short-and long-term consumer interest in teams on Twitter. From this, important theoretical and practical understanding can be derived by considering consumer behavior in the automated "like economy" of social media.