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The purpose of this article is to use the “Big Five” personality structure (openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and emotional stability) to explore the relationship with political consumer behavior.

Political consumer behavior is (not) buying products for social, political or environmental reasons. Cited motivations for political consumption include preserving the environment, developing a sustainable economy or using boycotts as political pressure, alongside social reasons such as reducing child labor. We explored this relationship among two representative studies of young people using ordinary least squares regression.

We concluded that in particular openness to experience leads to more political consumer behavior. Agreeableness or trust in people also often has a positive effect on political consumer behavior, while the effects of extraversion tend on the contrary to be negative.

Although in the literature the “Big Five” is generally accepted as the best measure for the main personality traits, there is no consensus on the measurement of personality. The research area has thus a clear need for a good, reliable measurement of the five personality traits, such as the TIPI or a short version of the bipolar personality scales.

The research suggests that a more specific approach towards young political consumers might be valuable.

The research can influence how marketers deal with fair trade products or how boycotts can attract larger audiences. Through this knowledge, social responsibility and environmental conscientiousness will increase.

This article focuses on the personality traits and motivations of the political consumers and how these personality traits interact with the attitudes that motivate political consumption using representative samples of young people. It also focuses on a specific and different outcome, political consumption, whereas most studies focused solely on single items of pro-environmental behavior .

Through activism, brands participate in the sociopolitical controversies that shape society today. Based on social identity theory, this study aims to examine the moderating effects of consumer–brand identification (CBI) and political ideology in explaining consumer responses to brand activism. Furthermore, the role of perceived marginalization that can arise in the case of consumer–brand disagreement is explored.

The hypothesized effects were tested in three experiments. Study 1 (n = 262) and Study 2 (n = 322) used a moderation analysis, which was supplemented by a mixed design analysis with repeated measures in Study 1. In Study 3 (n = 383), the mediating effect of perceived marginalization by the brand was tested using a moderated mediation model.

The results show that strong CBI as well as a conservative ideology buffer the negative effects of consumer–brand disagreement on brand attitude and word-of-mouth intentions. In the case of agreement with a brand’s stance, no direct or interactive effects of brand activism on consumer responses occur. Perceived marginalization by a brand mediates the effects of brand activism.

This study extends the “love is blind” versus “love becomes hate” debate to the realm of brand activism and finds evidence for the former effect. It also contributes to the research on political consumption by highlighting the role of political ideology as an important boundary condition for brand activism. Perceived marginalization is identified as a relevant risk for activist brands.

Despite the importance of the interaction between consumers and service personnel for how consumers perceive quality, service research assumes that both customers and service provider are perfectly able to interact with each other. This might not be the case on bilingual markets. This paper aims to examine customers ' behavioral reactions to being served in their first versus second language. Specifically, the paper tests whether bilinguals who are served in their second language are less likely to tip the service provider. Moreover, it seeks to examine the mediating role of speech accommodation, and the moderating roles of bilinguals ' perceived second language proficiency and political considerations.

Study 1 tests the main hypothesis using a scenario-based experiment with adult consumers in two bilingual countries (Belgium, Finland). Study 2 further elaborates on these findings using a retrospective survey of actual customer experiences in Belgium.

Driven by perceptions of speech accommodation, the results consistently show that consumers are more likely to tip if served in their native language compared to when served in their second language. Moreover, this relationship is not dependent on consumers ' perceived second language proficiency, but rather upon their political considerations.

This is the first study of bilingual customers ' behavioral reactions to being served in their second language, among bilingual customers from different countries. Given that more than half the countries in the world are multilingual, service providers need to take customers ' native language into account when serving bilingual customers.

The actions of the political consumer of food may be manifested either through boycotting or through deliberate purchase of certain products based on ethical, environmental or political values (buycotting). This article has several objectives: to analyse which factors predict the behaviour of political consumers of food; to examine how they perceive that their actions can contribute to social or political change and that the political system will respond to their interests and to people's needs and to discover whether, for the political consumer of food, good citizen behaviour comes closer to the norms of the socially “engaged” or “dutiful”.

A national survey of 1,000 people was conducted in Spain. For the analysis of the data, logistic regression models were developed to determine the factors that most influenced the boycott or deliberate purchase. To address the relationship between food consumption in the political arena and political effectiveness and citizenship standards, the authors have conducted factor analyses of the main components.

The main results show political food consumers to be people who are interested in politics, distrust government and big business, are confident in their ability to influence these groups to change practices that are not in line with their values and have a high degree of social engagement.

Consumers are demanding a fairer and more supportive agri-food production system, a healthier and more environmentally friendly diet and accountability from both the private sector and policymakers.

These data represent progress in the study of this form of political action in Spain as there are no precedents.

This study aims to specifically focus on the lower-involvement young adult voters within the Australian compulsory voting context. It explores voters’ political decision-making by considering the influence of the consumer behaviour theory of involvement.

A thematic analysis was conducted to analyse the interviews within the two research questions: information seeking and decision-making.

Key themes within information seeking are the reach of the information available, the frequency of the information presented, the creativity of the message and one-way versus two-way communication. Key themes within evaluation are promise keeping/trust, achievements or performance and policies. Lower-involvement decision-making has the potential to be a habitual, limited evaluation decision. However, issues of trust, performance and policies may encourage evaluation, thereby reducing the chances of habitually voting for the same party as before.

This new area of research has implications for the application of marketing for organisations and political marketing theory. Considering voting decision-making as a lower-involvement decision has implications for assisting the creation and adaptation of strategies to focus on this group of the population.

The compulsory voting environment creates a unique situation to study lower-involvement decision-making, as these young adults are less likely to opt out of the voting process. Previous research in political marketing has not specifically explored the application of involvement to young adult voting within a compulsory voting environment.

Given the division between conservative and liberal ideologies on many issues, brands navigate social media minefields whenever they take a social or political stance. This study aims to explore real-time social media consumer responses to eight US boycott threats, including both conservative-based and liberal-based calls for boycott.

A grounded theory analysis of approximately 800 tweets collected in the 24 h following each brand’s trigger event led to a framework of motivations for using social media to engage in boycott discussions over a brand’s political stance.

Eleven pro-boycott and 11 anti-boycott consumer profiles emerged across cases. Overarching motivations for pro- and anti-boycotters include a desire to cause/prevent change, seeking justice/fairness, self-enhancement and expression of hostility. Findings suggest that political consumerism occurs with differing motivations and varying levels of emotion, that brand defenders may lessen boycott effectiveness and that threats to boycott may not always translate to actual boycotts.

This paper explores actual consumer boycott calls from various industries as they unfolded in real-time, as opposed to other research that explores hypothetical boycotts or a single case study. Additionally, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this work is among the first to explore how consumers enter the boycott conversation in defense of the brand and attempt to diffuse the call for a boycott.

The purpose of this paper is the better understanding of the increasing relation between big data 2.0 and neuromarketing, particularly to influence election outcomes, along with a special aim to discuss some raised doubts about Trump’s presidential campaign 2016 and its ability to hijack American political consumers’ minds, and to direct their votes.

This paper combines deductive/inductive methodology to define the term of political neuromarketing 2.0 through a brief literature review of related concepts of big data 2.0, virtual identity and neuromarketing. It then applies a single qualitative case study by presenting the history and causes of online voter microtargeting in the USA, and analyzing the political neuromarketing 2.0 mechanisms adopted by Trump’s political campaign team in the 2016 presidential election.

Based on Trump’s political marketing mechanisms analysis, the paper believes that big data 2.0 and neuromarketing techniques played an unusual role in reading political consumers’ minds and helping the controversial candidate to meet one of the most unexpected victories in the presidential elections. Nevertheless, this paper argues that the ethics of using political neuromarketing 2.0 to sell candidates and its negative impacts on the quality of democracy are and will continue to be a subject of ongoing debates.

The marriage of big data 2.0 and political neuromarketing is a new interdisciplinary field of inquiry. This paper provides a useful introduction and further explanations for why and how Trump’s campaign defied initial loss predictions and attained victory during this election.

Acquiring “Likes” for a political party or candidate’s Facebook pages is important for political marketers. For consumers, these “Likes” are conspicuous, making their political affiliation visible to their network. This paper aims to examine the roles of the undesired social-self and visibility (conspicuous vs inconspicuous) in predicting consumers’ intention to “Like” political brands. The authors extend knowledge on the undesired social-self and transference of theory from general marketing to a political domain and provide practical advice for political marketers engaging social network sites.

The authors gather data from two surveys run with Facebook using electorates in the run up to the UK 2015 and US 2016 elections (n = 1,205) on their intention to “Like” political brands under different visibility conditions.

Data support the theorized relationship of the undesired social-self with social anxiety intention to “Like” when “Liking” is conspicuous. However, data also indicate that all users – irrespective of proximity to the undesired social-self – prefer to “Like” inconspicuously.

The research is limited by the generalizability of the specific context and the use of self-report measures.

Political marketers should reconsider promoting conspicuous consumption for that which is more inconspicuous.

The authors provide the first examination of the undesired social-self in driving behaviour under different visibility conditions. Furthermore, the authors challenge the extension of existing knowledge of the self-concept within political marketing, based on the “norm” for consumers’ to avoid disclosing political views publically.

By the end of this chapter, you should be able to demonstrate an understanding of:

The impact of increasing competition occurring within the UK retail environment.

Consumers efforts to reduce the disparity between beliefs and behaviours, as conceptualised within cognitive dissonance theory.

The alignment with marketing, the wider economy and the retail sector as a means to identify ways to shape value creation.