Political marketing in Japan: After the beginning of Internet applied in campaign in 2013

Japanese election law revised in the middle of April 2013 so that the Internet could be applied to campaign activity. This study explored how much political marketing technique and concept were used in the first national... [ view full abstract ]

Japanese election law revised in the middle of April 2013 so that the Internet could be applied to campaign activity. This study explored how much political marketing technique and concept were used in the first national election under the new law in order to help making democracy work in terms of citizen engagement.

As American experience showed that wired world has fundamentally changed the landscape people consume information, which promised for bringing greater citizen participation in the political process than ever before, the revision was also expected to drive higher voter participation in Japan, especially among younger voters. This study found, however, the reason why that never happened after all is because the underlying factors behind low voter participation.

Therefore, while some previous works suggested that political marketing has been evolving in Japan after 2001, this study concluded no parties could not dubbed voters in the 2013 election even with the technological benefit because of not only their one-way communication approach before the digital era, but also the lack of the marketing fundamentals. In other words, Japanese political market place has still much room to grow for the citizen engagement by power of marketing with high potential voters.