Political Marketing: Brand Personality for Generation Y Thai Voters

107 Pages·2008·0.72 MB·English

School of Business

MIMA – International Marketing

Course: Master Thesis International Marketing (EF0705)

Mälardalens Högskola

Master Thesis

Political Marketing:
Brand Personality for
Generation Y Thai Voters

Group 1996:
- Prapanrat Prommeenate ( 830202 )
- Ruechuphan Chookruvong ( 811004 )

Supervisor:
Tobias Eltebrandt
Abstract

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Date: May 28 , 2008

Course: Master thesis, EFO705

Authors: Prapanrat Prommeenate 830202
Ruechupan Chookruvong 811004

Tutor: Tobias Eltebrandt

Title: Political Marketing: Brand Personality for Generation Y Thai voters.

Problem: What are the important characteristics in brand personality of political
parties and leaders for Generation Y Thai voters? And how the parties should
communicate them with the Generation Y Thai voters?

Purpose: The aim of this thesis is to investigate and analyze the brand personality of
the ideal political party and the ideal political leader for Generation Y Thai voters and
compare with two biggest parties from the 2007 election. Furthermore, the paper will
recommend how to communicate those characteristics of the brand personality to
Generation Y Thai voters in five regions.

Method: Preliminary interviews are conducted to have a rough picture of Generation
Y Thai voters’ opinion from five regions. Then, the information helps formulate the
questionnaire. The questionnaires are distributed to investigate the ideal brand
personality as well as the brand personality of two exist biggest parties in Thailand.

Conceptual Framework: Brand personality concept is being used as the main
framework. In addition, the integrated marketing communication is used to explain
how the brand personality should be distributed.

Conclusion: The thesis offers the important traits and characteristics of the parties
and leaders for the Generation Y Thai voters. Additionally how the parties should
communicate the brand personality is recommended.
TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. Introduction .......................................................................................................................... 1
1.1 Political Marketing . 1
1.2 Thai Political Background ................................................................................... 1
1.2.1 The beginning of Democracy ........................................................................ 1
1.2.2 Thai Political Election............................................................................ 1
1.2.3 Thai Election 2007 ........................................................................................ 2
1.3 Generation Y ........................................................................................................ 3
1.4 Brand personality ................................................................................................. 3
1.5 Brand personality in politics ................................................................................ 3
1.6 Problem statement ................................................................................................ 4
1.7 Purpose ................................................................................................................. 4
1.8 Target Audience ................................................................................................... 4
2. Theoretical Framework ........................................................................................................ 5
2.1 Brand Personality ................................................................................................. 5
2.2 Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC) ................................................ 7
3. Methodology....................................................................................................................... 10
3.1 The choice of topic ............................................................................................. 10
3.2 The chosen theories............................................................................................ 10
3.2.1 Brand Personality concept .......................................................................... 11
3.2.2 Integrated Marketing Communication concept .......................................... 11
3.3 The choice of collecting information ................................................................. 11
3.3.1 Secondary Data ........................................................................................... 11
3.3.2 Primary Data ............................................................................................... 11
3.4 Analysis of Information ..................................................................................... 20
3.5 Limitation ........................................................................................................... 20
4. Finding ............................................................................................................................... 22
4.1 Secondary Data .................................................................................................. 22
4.1.1 Generation Y voters .................................................................................... 22
4.1.2 Power People Party ..................................................................................... 22
4.1.3 Thai Democrat Party ................................................................................... 22
4.1.4 The 2007 Election ....................................................................................... 23
4.1.5 Result from 2007 election ........................................................................... 23
4.1.6 Communication ........................................................................................... 24
4.2 Primary Data ...................................................................................................... 28
4.2.1 Brand personality of the Parties .................................................................. 29
4.2.1.1 Power People Party .............................................................................. 29
4.2.1.2 Thai Democrat Party ............................................................................ 32
4.2.1.3 Ideal Political Party .............................................................................. 34
4.2.2 Brand personality of the Leaders ................................................................ 36
4.2.2.1 Samak Sundaravej of Power People Party ........................................... 37
4.2.2.2 Abhisit Vejjajiva of Thai Democrats Party .......................................... 39
4.2.2.3 Ideal Thai political leader .................................................................... 42
4.2.3 Other information about election ................................................................ 44
4.2.4 The communication process ....................................................................... 44
5. Analysis .............................................................................................................................. 47
5.1 Brand Personality ............................................................................................... 47
5.1.1 The Parties .................................................................................................. 47
5.1.2 The Ideal Party ............................................................................................ 52
5.2 Communication .................................................................................................. 53
5.2.1 Promotional tools and messages ................................................................. 53
5.2.2 Structure and Branding ............................................................................... 55
6. Conclusion ......................................................................................................................... 56
6.1 Brand Personality ............................................................................................... 56
6.2 Communication .................................................................................................. 56
7. Recommendation ............................................................................................................... 58
8. References ......................................................................................................................... 60
Appendix I: Questionnaire ...................................................................................................... 62
Appendix II: Brand personality of the Parties ......................................................................... 67
Power People Party .................................................................................................. 67
Thai Democrat Party ................................................................................................ 72
Ideal Political Party .................................................................................................. 77
Appendix III: Brand personality of the Leader ........................................................................ 82
Samak Sundaravej of Power People Party ............................................................... 82
Abhisit Vejjajiva of Thai Democrats Party .............................................................. 87
Ideal Thai Political Leader ....................................................................................... 92
Appendix IV: The communication channels ........................................................................... 97

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TABLE OF FIGURES

Figure 1: Five dimensions of brand personality (Aaker)………… 6
Figure 2: Five dimensions of brand personality (Aaker) after adaptation 6
Figure 3: Elements for integration 7
Figure 4: Question and purpose from preliminary interview 12
Figure 5a: The geographic and number of Thai population 15
5b: Percentage of Thai population divided by regions 16
Figure 6a: The generation of population 17
6b: The number of population of Generation Y who can vote 17
6c: Percentage of population, which combine age under 18 years old 18
Figure 7a: Number of population age between 18 – 31 years old 18
7b: Percentage of population, which age between 18 – 31 years old 19
Figure 8: Members of Parliament from 2007 election from each region 24
Figure 9a: PPP’s Billboard 25
9b: PPP’s Speech 26
Figure 10: Actual received questionnaire 28
Figure 11a – 15b are in Appendix II Brand Personality of the parties
Figure 16a: PPP’s traits of brand personality in Thailand 31
16b: PPP’s characteristics of brand personality in Thailand 31
Figure 17a – 21b are in Appendix II Brand Personality of the parties
Figure 22a: TDP’s traits of brand personality in Thailand 33
22b: TDP’s characteristics of brand personality in Thailand 34
Figure 28a: Ideal political party traits 36
28b: Characteristics of ideal political part 36
Figure 29a – 33b are in Appendix III Brand Personality of the leaders
Figure 34a: Samak Sundaravej of Power People Party traits 38
34b: Characteristics of Samak Sundaravej of Power People Party 39
Figure 35a – 39b are in Appendix III Brand Personality of the leaders
Figure 40a: Abhisit Vejjajiva of Thai Democrats Party traits 41
40b: Characteristics of Abhisit Vejjajiva of Thai Democrats Party 41
Figure 41a – 45b are in Appendix III Brand Personality of the leaders
Figure 46a: The ideal political leader traits 43
46b: Characteristics of the ideal political leader 44
Figure 47a – 51b are in Appendix IV The communication channels
Figure 52a: The channel of communications for political marketing in Thailand 46
52b: Influential channels for political communication in Northeastern 46
1. Introduction
1.1 Political Marketing
This thesis paper aims to bring out the importance of Marketing in Politics. Brand
personality will be used in this investigation and analysis to find out how it will affect
the voters decision. The structure of the paper is able to use internationally; however,
this thesis will focus on Thailand, as it is the motherland of the authors. Therefore, in
order to benefit back to our motherland the decision was made on Thailand as the
focused location.

The authors will analyze Thai Politics in marketing way by comparing the politics
with consumer market. If the political parties are brands of products and leaders in
parties are products in the consumer market, voters (Thai people) are customers in
this aspect. Thai voters have to choose products (leaders from political parties) from
many Brands (Political parties) in the store (election) but in this case political product
is different from consumer product in the store because political product is intangible
and have no physical evidence for purchasers to try and compare before choosing to
buy it. Moreover in politics, for any one election, all voters make their choices on the
same day (with trivial exceptions such as postal and proxy votes) so there are almost
no purchasing decisions and social group reference with this characteristic and
certainly none, which affect as large a number of people (Andrew Lock & Phil Harris
1996).

1.2 Thai Political Background
1.2.1 The beginning of Democracy

In 1932 Thailand was changed from Absolute Monarchy to Democracy from a
revolution. The revolutionists at that time consisted of Military and Elite who
graduated abroad. The aim of the revolution was to have a constitution and form the
parliament, which still have the King under the constitution. The first Prime Minister
was one of the leaders of the revolutionists automatically. At the beginning only half
of the parliament members were from the election. From the first constitution until the
sixth the rules are opened to the government to form the parliament themselves
without controlling from the legal side. The huge change of Thai democracy
happened in year 1973. At that time there was a big protest in order to pursue a real
democracy from Thai government. On 14 October 1973, many pro-democracy
demonstrators, mostly students, were killed in a bloody but successful effort to
overthrow the dictatorial government at the time. After that, Thai people are more
alerted according to the election record showing that more people participated in
election from then on. (Plikpandin, n.d.)

1.2.2 Thai Political Election

In Thailand, there are two main elections; Governmental Election and Senator
Election. In this thesis, the authors will focus only on the Governmental Election
according that it involves more in marketing and politics since the Senator Election
does not allow the candidate to promote themselves as well as the candidate cannot be
one part of any political party.

Governmental election is the most important part of being democratic. The election
creates the representatives from the population as well as serving them following the
constitution. The Governmental Election in Thailand is separated into two voting
systems. First is the Party List voting of which each political party has to choose 100
candidates for being in its party list and the list will be ordered concerning the
importance of the person; then, the result will be calculate into percentages from the
votes all over the country. Accordingly each party will have the number of Members
of Parliament (MPs). The second voting system is the regional Members of
Parliament election which one province will have its own MPs of which the number
of MPs will depend on the amount of the population. Moreover each province is
divided into districts concerning the population and each district cannot have more
than 3 MPs. (Nidambe11, 2007)

1.2.3 Thai Election 2007

The last governmental election of Thailand took place in December 2007. After being
under control of the military for one year because of the coup d’état, the military
established a new constitution and then give the authority back to the population by
holding the election democratically. In the election there were 32 parties. However,
the two biggest parties in the competition are People Power Party (PPP) and Thai
Democrat Party (TDP) as it can be seen from the highest percentage they have from
the votes. Accordingly, this thesis will focus on the two main parties in order to
investigate the brand personality in the vision of Thai Generation Y voters. Moreover,
the PPP represented the winner of the previous election, which was withdrawn by the
coup d’état and the TDP is the oldest party of Thailand. (Manager, n.d)

People Power Party (PPP)

The party was established in 2007 with the perception of being representative of Thai
Rak Thai Party (TRT), the last winner of the election to be the government whose
power was taken by the military coup d’état. TRT was led by Thaksin Shinnawatra, a
successful business man of Thailand. During his power, he was convicted as
committing some political crimes such as changing the law to give his own company
more benefit which led to the big protest and the coup d’état afterwards. However,
they won the latest election to be the present Thai government and the leader of the
party, Samak Sundaravej, is serving the country as the present Prime Minister. (Power
People Party, n.d.)

Thai Democrat Party (TDP)

Thai Democrat Party (TDP) is the oldest political party in Thailand since 1956. The
party has had six leaders, in which there are three who served the country as the Prime
Ministers. Mostly and recently the party has been losing in the political elections;
however they always gain the second most votes in the list. Since 2006 the party has
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the new leader, which is Abhisit Vejjajiva, an Oxford graduate with first honor. (Thai
Democrat Party, n.d.)

1.3 Generation Y
Generation Y is one kind of the demographic describing the group of people who
were born between year 1977 and 1994 which means now in 2008 they are in age
from 14 to 31. This thesis will focus on the last governmental election of Thailand
occurred in 2007, so the targeted group will be scoped to the people with age from 19
to 31 right now according that they were the voters of Generation Y in the 2007
election. Furthermore, the Generation Y people are described to have some specific
personality such as racial diverse, extremely independent and empowered. Moreover,
this group of people will be the voters in long term from now on. (NasInsight, n.d.)

1.4 Brand personality
The brand personality is one important part of the brand image (Plummer, 2000), and
Aaker (1997) described brand personality as “the set of human characteristics
associated with a brand”. In addition, Aaker (2002) explained that the brand
personality is similar to the one of human, which possesses characteristics such as age
and gender, and human personality attribute such as warmth and concern.

Aaker also stated that brand personality is both compatible, long-term and that
everything associated with a brand affects the personality of it. There are both
product-related characteristics, for example, product category, price and attributes,
and non-product-related characteristics such as, symbols, country of origin, and
celebrity endorser (Aaker, 2002).

1.5 Brand personality in politics
If comparing to consumer product, a consumer who is about to choose between two
different brands, which are new and unknown, is more probable to choose brand that
he or she recognizes. If he or she knows both brands, the consumer will choose the
brand with the most perceived positive attributes (Keller, 1993). The difference in
customer’s mind about brand’s attributes is the brand image (Kotler et al., 2005) and
customers will use their experience and perceptions to filter the brand (Plummer,
2000).

Alike, consumer market, in politics market voters (customers) will also choose the
political parties (brand) by use their experience and perceptions to filter the brand.
Therefore, brand image of political parties is very significant in political market so
political parties have to make their brand image different from others and
communicate in positive way in voters’ perception to win the election.

Brand image consist of many aspects but one of the most important part of brand
image is “brand personality” (Plummer, 2000). Aaker (1997) defines brand
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personality as “the set of human characteristics associated with a brand”. Moreover,
it is possible that brand personality influences consumers’ perceptual processing of
product information (Aaker, 1997).

The concept of brand personality influenced the authors to scope the paper to study in
it by adapting it with Thai politics to find the importance and find the ideal one from
Thai people. Apart from that, this thesis will find the communication approach and
recommend Thai political parties to communicate their brand personality in
efficiency.

1.6 Problem statement
What are the important characteristics in brand personality of political parties and
leaders for Generation Y Thai voters? And how the parties should communicate them
with the Generation Y Thai voters?
1.7 Purpose
Purpose: The aim of this thesis is to investigate and analyze the brand personality of
the ideal political party and the ideal poltical leader for Generation Y Thai voters and
compare with two biggest parties from the 2007 election. Furthermore, the paper will
recommend how to communicate those characteristics of the brand personality to
Generation Y Thai voters in five regions.
1.8 Target Audience
This thesis paper is structured to recommend the political parties in Thailand about
the ideal brand personality and how to communicate it. Moreover, the paper is useful
for the researchers who are interested in investigating the brand personality in politics
all over the world. The readers who are interested in politics are also targeted in order
to reveal them another aspect of politics.
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