Investigating the use of various methods of marketing collaborations, and their success criteria and limitations, of business-with-business and business-with-influencer collaborations in North America.

3337962 Nova Scotia Limited (www.outsparkai.com) is a startup dedicated to help businesses scale, particularly with marketing intelligence. The continuing rapid growth in digital media adoption has resulted in a tremendous increase in collaboration based marketing. Influencer marketing, for instance, was predicted to more than double from $5.5bn in 2019 to $15bn in 2022. However, despite this growth in marketing collaborations, the subject hasn’t been deeply studied in academic literature. This is particularly true for business-with-business marketing collaborations, which, despite acknowledgements from technology giants such as HubSpot, Shopify, and BigCommerce, remains a subject where research studies are extremely scarce. This research project aims to (1) identify and categorize the various methods businesses, particularly E-Commerce, use for marketing collaborations with other businesses and online influencers, (2) assess the success criteria for these distinct ways of marketing collaborations and also the limitations they pose to the businesses and influencers, and (3) identify frameworks and patterns to open this subject for further research. The research would drive a significantly deeper understanding of marketing collaborations, especiallyfor eCommerce and local businesses, to drive higher brand awareness and sales-growth.

Faculty Supervisor:

Gordon Fullerton;Claudia Fuentes

Student:

Rishabh Arora

Partner:

OutSpark AI

Discipline:

Other

Sector:

Professional, scientific and technical services

University:

Saint Mary's University