When politics changes the game: The impact of national-populist election victories on advertising and price promotion effectiveness for foreign and domestic brands

Abstract The authors explore the differential impact of national-populist election victories on marketing effectiveness for foreign versus domestic brands. The authors hypothesize that following a national-populist election victory, both advertising and price promotion effectiveness decline for foreign relative to domestic brands. These predictions are supported using the 2016 USA presidential election to estimate the impact of marketing tools on product market shares. We observe that the relative change in advertising effectiveness is driven by a decrease in foreign brand effectiveness while the relative change in price promotion effectiveness is driven by an increase in domestic brand effectiveness. These findings are generalized in two experiments conducted in the context of household textiles and the 2024 French European Union election. This research provides marketers with insights on effectively deploying marketing tools in an era increasingly characterized by populism and polarizing elections. After a national-populist victory, the environment for foreign brands becomes more challenging.