'If I give you my emotion, what do I get?' Conceptualizing and measuring the co-created emotional value of the brand

The emotional value of interactions is a pillar construct in the brand value co-creation domain. So far, research has neglected the search for a measure adequately considering emotional-based joint interactions. Thanks to a netnographic sentiment analysis of 7605 brand-users' interactions retrieved from 18 Twitter brand profiles, this paper advances knowledge on brand co-creation and introduces a new concept in the marketing domain, the co-created emotional value of the brand, operationalised through the Emotional Co-Creation Score (ECCS). The paper reveals that different emotional experiential paths can be generated by the simultaneous interaction between the brand and its consumers. In particular, it shows that some sectors co-create more than others. Furthermore, brands provide more positive emotions than consumers and, when dealing with consumers' extreme polar emotions, they compensate consumers' emotions by calibrating the ECCS, which is not influenced by the frequency of Likes, and only marginally influenced by the frequency of interactions.