Linking political brand image and voter perception in India: A political market orientation approach

• Published date: 01 December 2022
• Author: Krishna DasGupta,Soumya Sarkar
• Date: 01 December 2022
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/pa.2751

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Linking political brand image and voter perception in India:

A political market orientation approach

Krishna DasGupta

1

| Soumya Sarkar

2

1

XIM University Bhubaneswar, Bhubaneswar,

India

2

Indian Institute of Management Ranchi,

Ranchi, India

Correspondence

Krishna DasGupta, Xavier Institute of

Management Bhubaneswar, Xavier Square,

Bhubaneswar, India, 751013.

Email: krishna@ximb.ac.in

Political parties in order to design their competitive strategies are always keen to

understand the factors that govern voter's perception. Voter's perception in this

paper utilizes voter's acknowledgement of voter orientation (VO) of political parties.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the constituent variables and their cumula-

tive impact on voter's orientation and examine the linkage that exists between them.

The authors have proposed four key constructs that demonstrates causality namely

voter involvement (VI), voter subjective knowledge (VSK), political brand image (PBI)

and environmental factor (EF). The study has used SEM method of model estimation.

VI and VSK merged into a new construct labelled as voter engagement (VE). Engaged

voter would impact PBI positively and political brand impacts VO. The relationship of

VE and VO is mediated PBI, but the same kind of mediation is not witnessed in the

case of EF. This research advances the understanding of composite variables of VO

from the vantage of political market orientation. Political brand mediates the associa-

tion between VE and voter perception.

KEYWORDS

environmental factor, political brand image, voter engagement, voter orientation

1|INTRODUCTION

Political marketing has evolved over the decades as a sub-discipline of

marketing in several trajectories (Harris & Lock, 2010; Schofield &

Reeves, 2015).In a marked departure from the past, political marketing

has included the term “stakeholder”(Hughes & Dann, 2009;

Ormrod, 2017) andthat each exchange of value in the political context

constitutes interactions (Henneberg & Ormrod, 2013). One of the

emerging dimensions of research has been applying consumer behav-

iour theories to votingbehaviour (Cwalina et al., 2010; Newman,1999,

2002; Newman & Sheth, 1985; French & Smith, 2010). These studies

highlight voters' belief about media's role in elections, cognitive

domains, and feelings, with all the three elements influencing voters'

attitude towards the candidate. More specifically, Ben-Ur and New-

man (2010) positsix distinct cognitivedomains that drive voter's behav-

iour. Similarly, O'Cass and Pecotich (2005) explored the impact of

cognitive domains used in consumer behaviour on voter behaviourdur-

ing elections.Further, voter behaviour is an outcome of political brand-

ing decisionsand political brand image (PBI).The importance of political

brand and its sensitivity to voter behaviour has been stated by Scam-

mell (2007)andAhmedetal.(2017) through the PBE framework and

recommends integrating political brands in voter's choice. The role of

PBI has been usedto explain the bond between political parties, voters

and leaders during post-election times (Jain et al., 2017). French and

Smith (2010) affirm that political brands and their collective memories

are likely to influence voter behaviour, thus affecting the outcome of

the general election. There is enough conclusive evidence to explore

the influence of PBI in shaping voter orientation (VO), a gap that is

addressed in thispaper. Despite being in the tradition of attempting to

understand voter behaviour, this study is independent of election or

pre-election campaign, hence may demonstrate the true reflection of

the way votersacknowledge political party's VO in general.The political

systems of non-Western democracies typically comprise several politi-

cal parties that are well entrenched and pervasive than those in the

developed democratic systems (Bittner, 2008). At the same time, non-

Western countries offer new ideas for democratic innovation

(Youngs, 2015), and democracy supporters from the West may find

some takeawaysfrom these democratic models. It will be interesting to

Received: 22 August 2020 Revised: 18 June 2021 Accepted: 11 August 2021

DOI: 10.1002/pa.2751

J Public Affairs. 2022;22(Suppl. 1):e2751. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/pa © 2021 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. 1of13

https://doi.org/10.1002/pa.2751