Proceedings of The 7th International Conference on Social sciences, Humanities and Education
Year: 2022
DOI:
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Political Brand Architecture and Voter Choice in a Developing Democracy
Kobby Mensah, Gilbert Kofi Mensah
ABSTRACT:
This study is to ascertain the individual influence and roles of the political brands of party, candidate, and policy on voter choice. In most developing democracies political parties have insufficient knowledge on how their political brands influence voter choice. There is also little research on this topic. Existing studies look at the composite effect of the political brands on voter decision. It is however important that we delineate the individual influence and roles of the political brands as they have implications on voter targeting and campaign expenditure. This study attempts to achieve this using the political brand architecture framework to elucidate the impact of each of the political brand elements on voter choice and outline the roles they play in persuading voters. The study employed four hundred and two registered voters as the sample size through a purposive sampling technique. The proposed conceptual model was empirically tested using partial least squares and structural equation modeling. Employing a quantitative approach, the study contributes to the literature with its findings that policy brand and candidate brand significantly influence voter choice and serve driver and endorser roles respectively. Party brand has no influence on voter choice in Ghana.
keywords: political marketing, political branding, campaign strategy, voter choice, Ghana