The Effect of Applying Political Branding Strategies on Voter’s Behavior

Abstract

1. Introduction O ne of the most recent fields of brand research is the study of the human brand. The brand of a person who is well-known and subject to explicit marketing communications efforts has an exceptional value in political marketing, where the role of a political leader as part of the political marketing process has been recognized extensively. The process of exploring the application of human branding in politics provides a context in which the relation between candidate image and voter behavior can be explored and further developed. As voter behavior studies have been often discussed from the western perspective, the influence of different cultural, social and political context has remained unknown;-such as the emerging Islamic political stream in the Middle-Eastern communities-. This has motivated the researcher to explore the significance and impact of applying political branding on voter behavior in Egypt, as well as examining two new attributes of political brand namely: “Religious Tendency” and “Ideological Tendency”, to test their significance and influence on voter behavior, choices and perceptions in the attempt to build a predictive model of the Egyptian voters’ behavior based on applying the strategies of political branding.

2. Research Problem The problem underlying this research is the lack of understanding of the drives of the Egyptian voter behavior, and the absence of a theoretical and practical framework from the field of political marketing, stressing in particular the importance of political brand and its influence on voter behavior. 3. Research Objectives The main objective of this research is: to have a profound understanding of the drives of the Egyptian voters behavior, to examine the influence of applying advanced political marketing theories and techniques on a new established democracy like Egypt, and to define the various attributes that compose the political brand in an eastern community with a very different culture and social context than its counterpart in western communities. As well this study aims to test empirically the model of voter behavior, where four elements are influencing the choice of a given candidate: Brand Attributes, Televised Debates, Media Polls and voter demographic profile.

4. Research Hypotheses H1. There is a significant relationship between Political branding and Voter Behavior. H2. The voters Demographic variables moderate the relationship between political branding and Voter Behavior. H3. There is a significant relationship between Televised Debates and Voter Behavior. H4. There is a significant relationship between Media Polls and Voter Behavior. 5. Research Findings This study has shown that political branding has a significant impact on voter’s behavior. As well this study was able to provide a predictive equation of the voting decision of Egyptian based on his evaluation of three brand attributes; Situational Contingency (X1), Religious Tendency (X2) and Social Imagery (X5) as follow: 1/ [EXP((0.293+(0.447 X1)+(0.394 X2)+(0.456 X5)) +1]