Toward a conceptual framework of emotional relationship marketing: an examination of two UK political parties

Dean, D, Croft, R and Pich, C ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1259-2827, 2014. Toward a conceptual framework of emotional relationship marketing: an examination of two UK political parties. Journal of Political Marketing, 14 (12), pp. 19-34. ISSN 1537-7857

Preview

Text PubSubs3417_2275_Pich.pdf - Published version Download (437kB) | Preview

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to review the notion of branding and evaluate its applicability to political parties. As ideological politics is in decline, branding may provide a consistent narrative where voters feel a sense of warmth and belonging. The paper aims to build an understanding of the complexity of building a political brand where a combination of image, logo, leadership, and values can all contribute to a compelling brand narrative. It investigates how competing positive and negative messages attempt to build and distort the brand identity. A critical review of bran ding, relationship marketing, and political science literature articulates the conceptual development of branding and its applicability to political parties. The success or failure of negative campaigning is due to the authenticity of a political party’s brand values — creating a coherent brand story — if there is no distance between the brand values articulated by the political party and the values their community perceives then this creates an "authentic" brand. However, if there is a gap this paper illustrates how negative campaigning can be used to build a "doppelganger brand," which undermines the credibility of the authentic political brand. The paper argues that political parties need to understand how brand stories are developed but also how they can be used to protect against negative advertising. This has implications for political marketing strategists and political parties. This paper draws together branding theory and relationship marketing and incorporates them into a framework that makes a contribution to the political marketing literature.

Item Type:	Journal article
Publication Title:	Journal of Political Marketing
Creators:	Dean, D., Croft, R. and Pich, C.
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Place of Publication:	Abingdon
Date:	2014
Volume:	14
Number:	12
ISSN:	1537-7857
Identifiers:	Number Type 10.1080/15377857.2014.990849 DOI
Divisions:	Schools > Nottingham Business School
Record created by:	EPrints Services
Date Added:	09 Oct 2015 11:16
Last Modified:	09 Jun 2017 13:54
URI:	https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/25335

Actions (login required)

Edit View

Statistics

Views

Downloads