Business Commons^™

Techy, Classy, And Social: Electric Vehicles And Brand Communication On Twitter, Marilena Olguta (Olga) Vilceanu, Kailey Bertelson, Rhianna Davis

Association of Marketing Theory and Practice Proceedings 2020

This study explored brand communication and audience engagement metrics for automakers selling electrified vehicle models in the U.S. The dataset included all Twitter communication from 27 major brand accounts during a one-year period (July 2018 through June 2019). Data analysis focused on communication volume, explicit saturation, and discourse clustering around key themes and variables. The study found abysmal amounts of EV-category explicit terminology for all brands, particularly so for U.S. accounts. Audience engagement was stronger for brands that pulled EVs into the lifestyle of their targets, than for brands pushing normative messages about environmental concerns.