Browsing by Author "Mortimore, Roger"

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    Asymmetry in Leader Image Effects and the Implications for Leadership Positioning in the 2010 British General Election
    (Warc, 2013-11-11) Mortimore, Roger; Baines, Paul R.; Crawford, Ian; Worcester, R.; Zelin, Andrew
    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 leader's image attribute perceptions measured against the public's 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.
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    BPC/MRS enquiry into election polling 2015: Ipsos MORI response and perspective
    (World Advertising Research Center, 2017) Mortimore, Roger; Baines, Paul R.; Worcester, Robert; Gill, Mark
    This Forum article considers the unsatisfactory results of pre-election opinion polling in the 2015 British general election and the BPC/MRS enquiry report into polling by Sturgis et al., providing a response from Ipsos MORI and associated researchers at King’s College London and Cranfield Universities Whilst Sturgis et al. (2016) consider how to perfect opinion poll forecasting, why the 2015 prediction was inaccurate when the same methodology returned satisfactory results in 2005 and 2010 at Ipsos MORI is considered here instead We agree with Sturgis et al. that the inaccurate results were not due to late swing or the ‘shy Tory’ problem and with Taylor (2016) that the underlying problem is a response rate bias However, Sturgis et al. critique pollsters in their report for systematically under-representing Conservative voters but the Ipsos MORI final poll had too many Conservatives, too many Labour voters and not enough nonvoters The Sturgis et al. conclusion is convincing that the politically disengaged were under-represented due to quotas and weighting mechanisms designed to correct for response bias Nevertheless, for Ipsos MORI, this explanation does not account for why the polling methodology was inaccurate in 2015 when it had performed accurately in 2005 and 2010 For Ipsos MORI, a more likely explanation is that Labour voters in 2015 became more prone to exaggerate their voting likelihood We offer various postulations on why this might have been so, concluding that to account for the inaccuracy requires a two-fold response, to improve: (i) sample representativeness and (ii) the projection of voting behaviour from the data Unfortunately, the BPC/MRS report offers no blueprint for how to solve the problem of sampling the politically disengaged Whilst Ipsos MORI have redesigned their quotas to take account of education levels, to represent those better with no formal educational qualifications and reduce overrepresentation of graduates, polling in the referendum on EU membership suggests that the problem of drawing a representative sample has been solved but difficulties in how best to allow for turnout persist.
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    Examining the Academic/Practitioner Divide in Marketing Research
    (Emerald Group Publishing Limited, 2009-01-01T00:00:00Z) Baines, Paul R.; Brennan, Ross; Gill, Mark; Mortimore, Roger
    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 other's 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 community was disappointingly low. These represent limitations on the generalisability of the findings. Practical implications - It is argued that marketing research can be undertaken separately by academics and practitioner researchers but that joint working between academic and commercial marketing researchers represents another dimension to marketing research which could be facilitated by the creation of joint initiatives, including industry- inspired academic-practitioner research projects and the development of government-funded academic-practitioner research projects, building on both groups' unique sets of skills. Originality/value - The paper reports on the outcome of an empirical study that has implications for the conduct of marketing research in universities and market research agencies.