Market Segmentation and Product Differentiation in Political Campaigns: A Technical Feature Perspective

The perceived importance of five technical service qualities (Gronroos 1984) or features (i.e. national and local policies, leaders, values and candidates), and voters’ ratings of the Labour and Conservative Parties’ competence on each of these parameters, were investigated during the 2001 British General Election using an a priori segmentation method and the classification tree statistical technique for data analysis. Voter ratings of the technical service features were found to be indicators of intention to vote. A product differentiation approach is most likely to influence voting intention, because the technical service features are more readily manipulated through marketing programmes than demographic and customer characteristics (Bucklin and Gupta 1992). Ratings of technical service features are stronger indicators of voting intention than voter demographics and characteristics. A product differentiation approach, based around technical service features, would be the most effective focus for strategy development in future political marketing campaigns.     

Young Adults and Politics: Investigating Factors Influencing Voter Decision Making

Many parallels have been drawn between politics and marketing; however, the application of consumer behavior decision making to voter decision making is still an important research focus. Results from general elections around the world show that the turnout among young adults tends to be lower than in the general electorate, suggesting low interest and involvement in politics. This qualitative study investigated low-involvement decision making of young adult voters in Australia. Data were compiled from semistructured face-to-face interviews conducted with 29 young adults to explore their views, and NVivo software was used to assist with thematic analysis. Findings suggest that with low-involvement voter decision making, perceived knowledge and passive information seeking are important factors. Exposure to the media also plays an important role, and young voters rely more on traditional media such as newspapers and television than on social media for current political information.     

React to the future: political visualization,emotional reactions and political behavior

Abstract

This study explores the mediating role political visualization – the process of imagining future political scenarios – plays in determining how political advertising affects voting behaviour. Specifically, we theorize that when partisans are exposed to political ads that are narrative (compared to non-narrative) in nature, they will engage in more political visualization. Partisans will then experience emotional reactions to these imagined futures – specifically, enthusiasm for the in-group candidate and anger towards the out-group candidate. These emotional reactions, in turn, will make a partisan more likely to vote for the in-group candidate and less likely to vote for the out-group candidate. We test this model by employing an experimental design where American partisans were presented a political ad (in the form of an email) that is either narrative or non-narrative. Results provide support for most of our expectations and suggest that visualization may play an important role in determining the influence of a political ad.     

Drivers and outcomes of political candidate image creation: The role of social media marketing

The study examines the role of social media marketing (SMM) activities and the influence of perceived candidate image in building voter–candidate relationship equity within the context of United Kingdom (UK) politics. Drawing from branding literature and social identity theory the article further investigates the role of candidate image as a mediator between SMM and voter–candidate relationship equity, whilst also testing the moderating effect of political ideologies. Survey results from 235 young UK voters indicate that while all SMM activities appears to positively influence the perceived candidate image, not all SMM variables directly relate to relationship equity. The relationship rather appears to be an indirect one, mediated through the political candidate's image. Surprisingly, political ideology also does not appear to moderate the connection between candidate image and voter–candidate relationship equity. The study findings highlight the growing importance of SMM activities and candidate image in political contexts, providing insights for political campaigners.     

Targeting Young Voters in a Political Campaign: Empirical Insights into an Interactive Digital Marketing Campaign in the 2007 Finnish General Election

At general elections across Europe, turnout among young people tends to be significantly lower than among older voters. Therefore, this article examines a digital marketing campaign that was targeted at young voters in the 2007 Finnish general election. More specifically, this article aims to provide insights into the creative development process of a political marketing campaign and the nature of the client-agency relationship in political campaigns. The methodology adopted in this article consisted of in-depth interviews with key informants involved in the campaign planning and implementation. The results provide new empirical insights into the challenges that political campaigner may face when they target political marketing at young voters. In addition, the results suggest that there are differences between commercial and political marketing also in a digital marketing context. Finally, the results support the view that marketing professionals have a strong role in a creative development process of a political marketing campaign. The ideas put forth herein can certainly help advertising professionals to plan political marketing campaigns that engage young people in future elections and therefore aid candidates in their quest to achieve electoral success.     

Factors affecting attitudes and behavioural intention towards social networking advertising: a case of Facebook users in South Korea

This study examined factors (e.g., ad values and social networking advertising characteristics) influencing consumers' attitudes and behavioural intention towards three types of social networking advertising (SNA) on Facebook – home page ad, social impression ad, and organic impression ad. Findings demonstrate that peer influence had the most significant impacts on attitude and behavioural intention across all types of SNA. The significant interaction term of invasiveness and privacy concern indicates that both attitude and behavioural intention were diminished, particularly when perceived invasiveness and privacy concern were high simultaneously. In addition, results suggest that attitudes towards the ad played a mediating role between SNA characteristics and behavioural intention. Lastly, among the types of SNA, consumers preferred organic impression ads that featured friends' names on their newsfeed more than paid ads located on the sidebar of their Facebook pages.     

Grey Power,School Gate Mums and the Youth Vote: Age as a Key Factor in Voter Segmentation and Engagement in the 2005 UK General Election.

This paper seeks to examine attempts by the main political parties in the UK general election of 2005 to segment the electorate according to their age and position within the life cycle. Particular attention is given to product adjustments and the party campaigns for the votes of older people, the "grey vote", as the political market shifts profoundly driven both by demographics, the ageing of the population, as well as by electoral behaviour, the declining participation of younger voters. Consideration is also given to segmentation of voters in the first age, the "youth vote", and the second age, "Generation Jones" and "school gate mums". The paper moves on to discuss age and segmentation in the context of elections remaining essentially mass communications campaigns, and the responses within civil society to the apparent power allocated to sub-groups identified as priority targets.     

Does Political PR Enhance or Trivialise Democracy? The UK General Election 2001 as Contest between Presentation and Substance

Modern UK general election campaigns cannot be fully understood without assessing the role of political public relations by the major parties. They seek voter attention and commitment through the three 'P's of policy, personality and presentation. But presentation carries a health risk for democracy: does it illuminate or obscure policy and personality?

Monitoring and content analysis of the 2001 election suggests mixed benefits from political PR for politicians, voters and media but one firm conclusion for the latter two groups: making elections an informed and rational choice requires continuous scrutiny to see through the presentational trellis of political PR. Of all PR forms, political PR is the most influential because of its proximity to state and regulatory power: even so, its use in general elections cannot reverse declining electoral participation.     

Political Advertising and the Older Electorate

An experimental study involving samples of young and old voters examines whether older people are more susceptible to various types of political advertisements (positive versus negative and ambiguous versus clear) than are their younger counterparts. Our results extend research from cognitive psychology into political advertising and confirm age-related differences that favor younger people. The results are mixed regarding the persuasive impact of political advertisements. Specifically, younger people actually show greater attitudinal vulnerability and the oldest voters show the greatest behavioral vulnerability.     

Consumers' Responses to Implicit and Explicit Gay-Themed Advertising in Gay vs. Mainstream Media

ABSTRACT

Further study is needed to validate concerns over gay-themed ads appearing in mainstream media. This study investigates the effects of such ads by comparing them to the effects of gay-themed ads placed in gay media. The study delves into the differential effects of implicit and explicit visual messages. It also examines how consumers' attitudes toward homosexuality affect their purchase intention as well as advertising and brand evaluation. The study's findings suggest that implicit, rather than explicit, gay-themed ads lead to higher purchase intention and more favorable advertising and brand evaluation. The study results show that the type of advertising message (i.e., implicit or explicit gay-themed ads) moderates the relationship between gay-media and mainstream media. Finally, this study finds that a low level of tolerance toward homosexuality results in lower purchase intention as well as less favorable evaluations of both the advertising and brand. Managerial implications are also discussed.     

Political PR in the 2005 UK General Election: Winning and Losing,With a Little Help From Spin

The public relations of the UK general election of 2005 is examined in the light of the active promotional culture of British politics, a culture that is especially active at election time. The PR or 'spin' can be seen as a presentational trellis offering to voters, mostly via the media, glimpses of policies and politicians which are favourable to the originating party. The purpose of the trellis for the parties is to maximise their electoral advantage and to minimise their disadvantage. The major obstacle to their success is the capacity of the media to brush aside the trellis and to report on the 'other side'. Whatever the benefits and costs for democracy of this tension between partisan presentation and journalism, there is little evidence that voter disengagement with electoral politics is caused by these public relations shows. Political PR is part of the UK's promotional culture; voter disengagement relates to other systemic and more causal features of contemporary British society. A small purposive (but unrepresentative) survey of campaign observers showed key features of political PR servicing the fundamentals of party, policy and personality.     

Young People's Attitudes Towards British Political Advertising: Nurturing or Impeding Voter Engagement?

SUMMARY

This article presents findings from a national survey of ‘potential’ first time voters at the 2001 British General Election–specifically their attitudes towards the print advertising used by the main political parties during this election. In analysing the data, the authors were particularly interested in examining the claim that political advertising contributes to a sense of malaise–most acutely apparent among young people. While we found high levels of claimed advertising awareness, this was coupled with largely unfavourable attitudes towards most of the print advertising used in the election. Despite these judgements, most young people considered the advertising to be at least as persuasive as its commercial cousins. Not surprisingly the evidence provides a mixed picture in terms of the role political advertising plays in the political dispositions of young people. As a familiar discourse advertising offers the political classes an entry point to establish a dialogue with young sections of the electorate. However, for many young people, political advertising appears to help reinforce their predilection about politics being something one naturally distrusts.     

Does gay-themed advertising haunt your brand?

This study is designed to investigate the effect of gay-themed advertising as well as consumers’ gender, tolerance towards homosexuality (low vs high tolerance) and consumers’ brand commitment (low vs high commitment) on attitude towards ad and attitude towards brand. The study result suggests that people exposed to non-gay-themed ads had more positive attitudes towards the brand than did people exposed to gay-themed ads. The study findings suggest that ads featuring homosexual imagery could lead to negative brand evaluation. The study finds that heterosexual males exposed to such ads had less favourable attitudes towards the advertising and brand as well. The study finds that subjects with high tolerance towards homosexuality have more positive attitudes towards the ad and brand, and have higher purchase intention than do subjects with low tolerance. Furthermore, the results suggest that people with high brand commitment had more favourable attitudes towards ad and brand. Practical and theoretical implications are discussed.     

Political Opinion Leadership and Electoral Behavior

SUMMARY

A micro-model that focuses on political opinion leadership within an extended nomological network is developed and tested. Data were gathered from a sample of voters in an election. The results indicate that political opinion leadership played a central role in the voting behavior. Key antecedents to opinion leadership were voter involvement, subjective knowledge, and indirectly, information seeking behavior. Important consequences were voting stability, perceived risk and political satisfaction.     

The Tri-Mediation Model of persuasion

In this paper, the effects of positive versus negative (political) advertising are modelled. The findings show that positive as well as two different types of negative advertising will lead viewers to formulate specific attitudes towards the brand (sponsor). However, the manner in which these attitudes are formed will be affected by ad type and argument strength. It was found that under strong message argument conditions, negative attack ads may lead to more positive evaluations of the sponsoring candidate, whereas under weak message argument conditions, direct comparison ads may be superior.

In developing this model to include the effects of negative appeals, the traditional Dual Mediation Model of persuasion is redefined. The author demonstrates that a peripheral cue (attitude towards the ad) can have an impact on the central route to persuasion by fostering message acceptance not only in regard to the sponsor of the advertisement but also in regard to a competitor. The resultant Tri-Mediation Model of persuasion provides significant insights into the nature of cognitive processing resulting from exposure to negative advertising.     

Brexit as an Inelastic Good: A Microeconomic Theory of Direct Democracy

On 23 June 2016 a slight majority of 52% of UK voters opted to leave the European Union after 44 years of membership. Many were surprised by the result. Why did a majority vote Leave? Why were the majority of the voters not susceptible to the economic arguments advanced by major economic institutions such as the Bank of England, OECD, IMF, HM Treasury and virtually all major investment banks? Why did (now former) Prime Minister David Cameron, who campaigned for Remain, lose the vote only a year after his party had won a surprise victory in the 2015 general election?     

Product Attribute-Based Voter Segmentation and Resource Advantage Theory

Political parties have long since targeted the marginal constituency and floating voters using demographic segmentation approaches and the use of market segmentation techniques in general election campaigns is now well-documented (see Johnson 1971; Ahmed and Jackson 1979; Yorke and Meehan 1986; Baines et al. 2003). The actual practice of segmentation as undertaken by political parties and its relation to theory is less well-considered. This paper represents a serious attempt to outline how political parties targeted a priori segments of the electorate including gender, age and lifecycle in the 2005 British General Election when they should have been adopting a product attributed-based approach. Selected MORI surveys from April 2005 were analysed, using logistic regression to indicate the most important factors in determining how Britons vote. Principal components analysis provides an indication of how the three main British political parties are perceived. The paper discusses, using resource-advantage theory (Hunt 1995; Hunt and Arnett 2004) how political parties might use their party and leader image, and policies to build their popularity in an election campaign.     

Parental Gate-keeping in Diasporic Indian Families: Examining the Intersection of Culture,Gender and Consumption

Current debates within studies of election campaign management focus on the extent to which the process has evolved, becoming more centrally-orchestrated and professional, over the last two decades. The normative account is that election campaigns focus on news management and elevate the status of party leaders; mediatised pseudo-events have replaced direct interaction with the voter. However marketing literature, as well as work on local campaigning, suggests an alternative model is more successful for electoral systems such as the UK. This promotes a more disparate set of individually tailored campaigns focusing on issues relevant to constituencies. In 2005 it seems that parties were promoting this more localised approach, however do voters value this more postmodern approach, or is it the national campaign that counts. Research among voters within three marginal constituencies finds that both national and local factors are influential upon voter behaviour; furthermore however, a not insignificant group of voters make their choice based on the service provision of their local representative.     

Political Parties,the Internet and the 2005 General Election: From Web Presence to E-Campaigning?

This article argues that the use of the Internet by the main British political parties during the 2005 general election campaign needs to be understood in terms of the ongoing transformation of e-campaigning in the UK. Since the emergence of the World Wide Web in the mid-1990s the main political parties have been quick to try and exploit the new technology to mobilise their supporters and persuade undecided voters. Over the course of three campaigns – 1997, 2001 and 2005 - clear patterns in the use of this technology have emerged. This article looks at how political parties in a competitive electoral marketplace try to adapt new information and communication technologies, such as the Internet, to help ensure they achieve their electoral goals. It argues that the evolution of the use of the Internet needs to be understood in terms of an ongoing series of responses of a vote maximising reflexive organisation, to the emergence of a new technology in a competitive electoral marketplace.     

Health-related ad information and health motivation effects on product evaluations

This study tests the effect of health-related ad information on perceived product healthfulness and purchase intention. Also, the study investigates whether consumers' health motivation moderates the effects, because of the way health motivation affects processing of health-related information in ads. Three types of health-related ad elements are distinguished: functional claims, process claims and health imagery. These elements were combined in mock ads and an online experiment was run to test the study hypotheses. Results show that health imagery has the largest impact on consumers' product evaluations, while functional claims and process claims have much smaller effects. Health motivation shows significant interaction with process claims on product evaluations.