Christopher Pich
Marketing Brexit: An exploratory study of young voter engagement in relation to the EU referendum
Pich, Christopher; Harvey, John; Armannsdottir, Guja; Poorrezaei, Mojtaba; Branco-Illodo, Ines; Kincaid, Andrew
Authors
John Harvey
Guja Armannsdottir
Mojtaba Poorrezaei
Ines Branco-Illodo
Dr Andrew Kincaid A.Kincaid@napier.ac.uk
Lecturer
Abstract
This article presents a study of young voter engagement in relation to the EU referendum—a democratic vote on the United Kingdom’s membership of the European Union. Using the marketing concept of engagement, we examine how young voters engaged cognitively, emotionally, and behaviorally with the referendum and its associated campaigns. A mixed-method study combining multiple-phase questionnaires, longitudinal social network analysis of Twitter, and sentiment analysis provides a rich empirical description of young voter engagement. The findings reveal that young voter engagement is multi-faceted and varies enormously across our sample, particularly for behavioral engagement online. We subsequently question the analytical relevance of the engagement construct for political marketing before developing a typology to classify young voters according to the variance and extent of their specific engagement profile, which we define as “Prototypical Engagement Persona.” We conclude the article by presenting an agenda for future research on young voter engagement.
Citation
Pich, C., Harvey, J., Armannsdottir, G., Poorrezaei, M., Branco-Illodo, I., & Kincaid, A. (2018). Marketing Brexit: An exploratory study of young voter engagement in relation to the EU referendum. International Journal of Market Research, 60(6), 589-610. https://doi.org/10.1177/1470785318793260
| Journal Article Type | Article |
|---|---|
| Acceptance Date | Jul 17, 2018 |
| Online Publication Date | Sep 3, 2018 |
| Publication Date | Nov 1, 2018 |
| Deposit Date | Nov 29, 2018 |
| Journal | International Journal of Market Research |
| Print ISSN | 1470-7853 |
| Publisher | World Advertising Research Center |
| Peer Reviewed | Peer Reviewed |
| Volume | 60 |
| Issue | 6 |
| Pages | 589-610 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1177/1470785318793260 |
| Keywords | engagement, political marketing, social media, young voter, |
| Public URL | http://researchrepository.napier.ac.uk/Output/1401611 |