Roger Mortimore

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.

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.

Positioning in political marketing: How semiotic analysis adds value to traditional survey approaches

Abstract The 2010 British election particularly focused on the party leaders’ images – a departure in fifty years of British elections. The principal contribution of the article is to illustrate how a combined approach to assessing leadership positioning using both the traditional survey and semiotic analysis can provide insights into what image attribute dimensions end up in the minds of members of the public (actual positioning) and on what image attribute dimensions party marketers are trying to position themselves (intended positioning). Using data from the 2010 British general elections, our findings indicate that the combined methodological approach would be particularly useful for brands that need repositioning, those whose image attribute positions change dramatically over time, and those who wish to target previously unresponsive target audience segments.

Examining the academic/commercial divide in marketing research

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to comment on the differences in perceptions that exist between academic and professional marketing researchers, as creators of new marketing knowledge, and explore how academics and practitioners can work together better on areas of mutual interest or separately on areas where their interests do not coincide.Design/methodology/approach – The approach is via two focus groups, one with researchers in marketing from universities and one with commercial market researchers, and via online surveys of the same target groups, with 638 respondents in all.Findings – The study indicates that the two sample groups have relatively congruent views about the advantages and disadvantages of each others approach to research but both groups believe they could do more to make their research more comprehensible and accessible to each other.Research limitations/implications – The empirical study was conducted in the UK only, and the response rate from the university marketing research ...

Positioning in political marketing: How Semiotic Analysis Can Support Traditional Survey Approaches

Abstract The 2010 British election particularly focused on the party leaders’ images – a departure in fifty years of British elections. The principal contribution of the article is to illustrate how a combined approach to assessing leadership positioning using both the traditional survey and semiotic analysis can provide insights into what image attribute dimensions end up in the minds of members of the public (actual positioning) and on what image attribute dimensions party marketers are trying to position themselves (intended positioning). Using data from the 2010 British general elections, our findings indicate that the combined methodological approach would be particularly useful for brands that need repositioning, those whose image attribute positions change dramatically over time, and those who wish to target previously unresponsive target audience segments.

The Polls and Their Context

Roger Mortimore and Anthony Wells explore the nature of modern opinion polling in the UK, which has changed dramatically in the few years since the last substantial studies were published: this provides necessary background to understand the performance of the polls at the 2015 election. Their chapter examines the changes which have taken place in British polling in recent years, covering the way in which polls are conducted, the number of polls published and the nature of the companies conducting them, the relationships between the polling companies and their media sponsors, and the way in which poll results are published and disseminated. The chapter also outlines the polling industry’s arrangements for self-regulation, by the British Polling Council and the Market Research Society.

Asymmetry in leader image effects and the implications for leadership positioning in the 2010 British general election

Using national survey data on voters’ perceptions of party leaders during the 2010 British general election campaign, we use logistic regression analysis to explore the association between specific image attributes and overall satisfaction for each leader. We find attribute-satisfaction relationships differ in some respects between the three main party leaders, demonstrating that leader image effects are not symmetrical across leaders. We find evidence that negative perceptions have more powerful effects on satisfaction than positive ones, implying that parties should seek to determine a leaders image attribute perceptions measured against the publics expectations of them on the same dimensions. The positions that campaigners ought then to choose are those that will have the most beneficial effect in encouraging voting behaviour for each particular leader or discouraging voting behaviour for an opponent.

The Campaign As Experienced by the Voters in the Battleground Seats

This chapter explores the election campaign from the point of view of the voters in some of the key Labour-Conservative battleground constituencies, where the eventual outcome of the election was likely to be decided and where we might expect the election to have been hardest fought. We consider the potential importance of the campaign here (as measured by the size of the floating vote), how many people the campaign reached and what those on the receiving end thought of it. We also look at how far the voters here were aware that they were in strategically important constituencies, how many claimed to be voting tactically, and how far these decisions seem to have been well informed and well judged. Finally we consider the impact of the leaders’ debates — here, as elsewhere, an influential factor, despite Nick Clegg’s performance being arguably an irrelevance in these constituencies that his party had no chance of winning.

Were the Polls Wrong about the Lib Dems All Along

Opinion polls in modern elections serve several purposes. From the amount of attention that tends to be paid after the election to analysing the accuracy of the final ‘predictions’, it might seem that this rather trivial game of trying to give the newspapers news of the result a few hours ahead of the vote-counting is the only important one. But of course it is not.

Brexit Britain, two years on

Since Cameron’s resignation, his successor, Theresa May, has been working to steer a course towards “Brexit”, but it has not been smooth sailing. She has faced disagreement within the UK Parliament, and her own party, on what the future of Britain’s relationship with the EU should be. Many are entirely set against leaving, while others refuse to countenance any arrangement that would keep Britain subject to EU rules, preferring a clean (if painful) break with the past. In March 2018, EU and UK negotiators agreed a transition deal to last 21 months after the formal time of departure, beginning at 11pm (UK time) on 29 March 2019. As with all things Brexit-related, the deal has met with concerns and complaints from all sides. But has the rancour surrounding Brexit prompted any real, lasting shifts in public attitudes? In a special article to mark the two-year anniversary of the Brexit vote, pollsters Sir Robert Worcester, Roger Mortimore, Paul Baines and Mark Gill explain how people voted in the 2016 referendum and whether differential turnout affected the final outcome. Then, in the Q&A that follows, the authors reflect on the results of recent public opinion surveys and consider what has changed in the past 24 months. M ai n im ag e: H en fa es /i st oc kp ho to .c om IN DETAIL