Marketing Brexit: An exploratory study of young voter engagement in relation to the EU referendum

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), pp. 589-610. https://doi.org/10.1177/1470785318793260

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.

Keywords
Marketing; Economics and Econometrics; Business and International Management

Journal
International Journal of Market Research: Volume 60, Issue 6

People

Dr Ines Branco-Illodo

Senior Lecturer in Marketing, Marketing & Retail