Neuromarketing in predicting voting behavior: A case of National elections in India

Abstract

AbstractPolitical choice has huge importance, either expressed in the balloting place or in the exit poll, in bringing a political party to power and thus impacting the economy and society's welfare. Research in leadership and decision‐making suggests that the physical characteristics and traits of an individual influence the consumer's trustworthiness. Despite being a less explored research area, studying the impact of specific verbal and non‐verbal cues of a political leader through a technological lens, such as eye‐tracking has been sparsely talked about. Three sets of experiments were conducted to study voters' visual attention and reactions to gage their willingness to vote. First, an eye‐tracking tool was used to record the visual attention and regions of interest (ROI) of voters. Subsequently, a short survey was used to analyze the “willingness to vote”, followed by a pilot study on their attention to non‐verbal cues from the candidate. Also, a sentiment analysis of the voters was gathered from social media platforms. The present study analyzed the non‐verbal aspects of a political leader with regard to voting intention and found that even a few of the non‐verbal cues have an influence on the willingness to vote for a candidate. The findings contribute to the literature of neuro‐politics and decision‐making by analyzing voters' experiences of two political leaders, Narendra Modi (NaMo) and Rahul Gandhi (RaGa) based on non‐verbal cues. Political parties and candidates should focus on non‐verbal cues to increase their chances of winning elections. In addition, practitioners from the industry should incorporate appropriate non‐verbal cues while designing ad campaigns, personal branding, PR campaigns, and CEO addresses.