When politicians as a product: Framing impact in decision making through the self‐concept physical of appearance and self‐congruency with the product gender

• Published date: 01 May 2022
• Author: José A Flecha‐Ortiz,Maria Santos‐Corrada,Maribel Ortiz,Rolando Rivera‐Guevarez
• Date: 01 May 2022
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/pa.2461

ACADEMIC PAPER

When politicians as a product: Framing impact in decision

making through the self-concept physical of appearance

and self-congruency with the product gender

José A Flecha-Ortiz

1

| Maria Santos-Corrada

1

| Maribel Ortiz

1

|

Lcdo Rolando Rivera-Guevarez

2

1

School of Business, Tourism &

Entrepreneurship, Universidad Ana G.

Mendez- Gurabo Campus, Gurabo,

Puerto Rico

2

Department of Criminal Justice, Universidad

de Puerto Rico en Carolina, Carolina,

Puerto Rico

Correspondence

Dr José A Flecha-Ortiz, Assitant Professor,

School of Business, Tourism &

Entrepreneurship, Universidad Ana

G. Mendez- Gurabo Campus, P.O Box 3030

Gurabo, 00778, Puerto Rico.

Email: flechaj1@uagm.edu

Self-concept and marketing strategies can produce cognitive activations in the minds

of people through physical appearance Schemes. A topic rarely addressed in aca-

demic literature is how to visualize a person as a consumer product. Through political

marketing, it was analyzed how framing communications can produce cognitive acti-

vations through the self-concept of physical appearance. This, in turn, will have an

impact on the consumption of politicians through the self-congruence effect.

Highlighting a person's physical attributes through political marketing management is

a powerful strategic resource that generates perceptions that then leads the receiver

to make a quicker decision. The results reflect a conceptualization beyond consumer

products, the psychological process of decisions between men and women. The

results explain that just like a consumer product, the political candidate can be seen

as a product since it keeps coherence and transmits the value to potential buyers

(voters). In addition, self-concept of physical appearance establishes a social con-

struction through the activations in the memory located in the individual perception

that then generates congruence in the way in which they make their decisions.

1|INTRODUCTION

Literature states that the study of self-concept is one of the most crit-

ical factors in understanding consumer behavior. From the marketing

perspective, an ideal framework of study for analyzing consumer phe-

nomena (Saad, 2016). As far as marketing is concerned, it extends

beyond the scope of the goods and services industries allows the

exploration of human nature through the study of new sectors

(Saad, 2019). One of these new industries is related to political mar-

keting. Márquez (2008), argues that marketing and communication

strategies no longer describe objects but can also individualize them

and endow them with a reliable representative or symbolic load.

From this perspective, political marketing offers new ideas about

human behavior, where self-concept explains how voters take short-

cuts through judgments when making decisions (Petersen, 2015).

Self-concept theory can provide an answer to understand the mech-

anisms that are part of the human mind and see the potential of a

person as a consumer product. Thus, political marketing becomes

notoriety as an evolutionary discipline influenced by the schools of

social, political , and business scien ces (Ormrod, Henneb erg, &

O'Shaughnessy, 2013).

The dictionary of the American Marketing Association (2019)

defines Political Marketing as a discipline designed to influence audi-

ences to vote for a person, party, or proposal. Concerning the political

candidate, it is established that it can be visualized as a product. This

is because a political product (candidate) is the best representation of

the political brand (Luque, 2004). Like consumer products, political

products (candidate) have the same characteristics that add value to

the brand as they convey coherence and credibility (Gerez, 2012).

However, the academic literature is not clear on how the market can

visualize a person as a product or on the mechanisms of the human

mind to make consumer decisions as a product. On the other hand,

Garzia (2011) argues that voters can develop a mental image of politi-

cal products on a limited basis of categories.

Received: 3 June 2020 Accepted: 3 September 2020

DOI: 10.1002/pa.2461

J Public Affairs. 2022;22:e2461. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/pa © 2020 John Wiley & Sons Ltd 1of14

https://doi.org/10.1002/pa.2461