Political Brands Used by Selected Presidentiales and Its Influence on the Electorates' Voting Decision

Brands are strategic assets and key to achieving a competitive advantage. Brands can be seen as a heuristic device, encapsulating a series of values that enable the consumer to make quick and efficient choices. More recently, the notion of a political brand and the rhetoric of branding have been widely adopted by many political candidates as they seek to differentiate themselves, and this has led to an emerging interest in the idea of the political brand. Therefore, this research aims to examine the perceived influence of the political brands towards the electorates’ voting decision. Bridging the branding theory to political context is the main contribution of this study. The study analyses seven theories and conducted a survey and interviews to strengthen the outcome of this research. The result shows that candidate political brands and brand trust has positive impact on voting decision and also, candidate integrity has play critical role to gain the trust of the electorates’. Voters’ exposure towards the political brands of the candidates have different responses on their affective, cognitive and behavioral attitude. Electorates’ give their vote on the candidate who have many television ads but with some considerations like if their brands show integrity and reputation which matches on their personality. The candidates who does not symbolizes his/her personality towards their brands has negative responses. This research implies that an individual politician's brand can compete with or enhance the corporate political party brand, which implies that political branding must take into account the communication role and culture of the highly involved consumer or the electorates’.