Voters' personalities and ideal party personality. Evidence from Poland.

• Author: Pilch, Irena
• Position: POLSCI PAPERS - Report

Introduction

A party which has just entered the political market needs to undergo a series of adjustments which will make it attractive for a potential voter. Many of these modifications have been defined by marketing professionals, in particular by researchers specialising in creating brands or personalities of product and service brands. Researchers find analogies both between consumer and voting behaviour as well as between the political market and the consumer market (Newman, 1994; Lock & Harris, 1996). The objective of this paper is to make an empirical attempt at reflecting a popular concept of brand personality within the realm of voting behaviour. The fundamental assumption underlying all further considerations is that voters perceive political parties in terms of features which are characteristic for people. As such, the parties are then assigned unique identities.

Both the "personality" of the ideal political party as perceived by the respondents and the personalities of the party's voters were diagnosed, since many studies confirm that the perceived similarity to a politician in terms of personality traits (Byrne, 1965; Caprara, Barbaranelli & Zimbardo 2002; Vecchione, Gonzalez Castro & Caprara, 2011) and the supported views and ideas (NewComb, 1961; Rokeach, 1973; Fraley, 2007) is a significant variable in the determination of voting preferences. However, the vast majority of research to date has concentrated on politicians only. Thus, the present study can contribute to a better understanding this phenomenon.

A brand can be seen as a tangible or intangible characteristic that represents and communicates information about the functional and symbolic benefits of products, services or ideas (Aaker, 1997; Arvidson, 2006). Consumers, through recognisable brands, assign products with a system of meaning and concepts, thereby granting them certain values that make the product distinct from the others. On the political market a party will gain value and importance in the eyes of the voter if it is treated as a brand (de Chernatony & White, 2002). Political parties should be rooted in public consciousness; they should be recognizable as identifiers of certain ideas, they should have an ethos the voters can identify with, and finally, they should have tradition and experience, based on which voters can anticipate the party's next moves. By creating an analogy between a political party and the brand, we can transfer the mechanisms used for creating a brand over to the political party, along with all the positive anticipated outcomes, which the brand brings about. The branding of a political party is important in light of building voter loyalty, which mobilises the electorate during an election; it also rationalises voters' decisions and emotions, provides for easier understanding of the goals of a political party and distinguishes a party from other political actors (see Smith, 2001; Schneider, 2004; Needham, 2005; Lees-Marshment, 2009; Scremin, 2007). Moreover, Catherine Needham (2005) points out that voters' perception of the political party in terms of a brand reduces the psychological costs of participation in the electoral campaign and the election. This is primarily associated with the fact that the brand in itself carries some information on the product, hence it shortens the time of exploration needed to find information on the political entity. It makes the political product more accessible within the respondent's cognitive field. In the voter's opinion, decisions made on the basis of attachment and loyalty are less risky and involve positive beliefs and attitudes such as credibility, confidence in better future and the belief that the promises made during the electoral campaign will come true.

One way to create a brand in the mind of the consumer is to give it a personality. The adoption of the idea that brands, companies or shops can be evaluated using personality traits, made it possible to use the achievements of personality theory in the analysis of brand personality (Pilch, 2012). The way brand personality features are perceived is shaped by the direct or indirect contact between a product and its consumer. One of the frequently emphasised functions of brand personality mentioned in the literature is its intermediation between a product and the identity of an individual (Aaker, Fournier & Brasel 2004). Consumers often focus their attention on personalities which are familiar to them, either because the consumer shares these traits or because he/she considers them to be ideal. A personality which is built on the foundation of traits considered to be of meaning to the consumer, can strengthen brand loyalty, bring it close to the individual, and invoke positive emotions. Similarly, attributing negative features to a brand may implicate negative emotions, resistance or disapproval. A defined brand personality also allows the consumer to specify who the product is meant for. This helps the product reach its target group more quickly.

A social image of a political party depends increasingly more often on politicians who are familiar to the general public. The platform of a political party is becoming more and more personalised because it is the image of the political leader (or other party members) which constitutes the actual product (see Caprara & Zimbardo, 2004). Recent evidence suggests that the personality traits of a politician, as seen by the voters, are becoming increasingly more important (McAllister, 2007). Numerous studies also emphasise the importance of similarities between a voter and a politician (Caprara, Barbaranelli, Consiglio, Picconi & Zimbardo, 2003). Voters are more likely to vote for these politicians whose personality is seen as compatible with the ideology of the political party of their preference, and whose traits are compatible with their own (Caprara & Zimbardo, 2004). This policy is consistent with the congruence principle (Hong & Zinkhan, 1995; Kressman, Sirgy, Herrman, Huber, Huber & Lee 2006), which is used widely in commercial marketing, and which states that consumers are willing to choose those brands whose characteristics, as perceived by the consumers, are compatible with their own. Studies carried out in Italy and Spain have shown that the similarity between the traits of the voter and the elected political entity is higher if the similarity concerns traits characteristic for the leader and his party (Vecchione, Castro & Caprara, 2011).

What is important, however, is that the naming used in public discourse is not that much associated with the names of individual politicians, but with the political parties themselves. In light of this, studies showing not only the relationship between voters and politicians, but also those dealing with the relationship between voters and political parties, are of importance. One of the options available is to investigate the way in which parties are perceived by voters, making an assumption that voters characterise a party by means of the same features they use to describe people. A study by Hayes (2005) suggests that voters, perceiving political parties, use such features as compassion, morality, leadership and empathy. A Polish study of free associations connected with political parties indicates that 87% of the associations describe typically human features, of which 27% describe human personality traits (in the case of ideal party attributes 54%) (Holewa & Gorbaniuk, 2009).

There have only been a few attempts to transfer the construct of brand personality into the world of politics. In two of them, an adaptation of Aaker's (1997) brand personality scale was made. Aaker's study of brand personality reveals the five-factor structure of traits (Sincerity, Excitement, Competence, Sophistication, Ruggedness). Schneider (2004) used Aaker's tool to diagnose the personality of German politicians and political parties, but he did not test the structure of party's personality. Smith (2009), in turn, using the same scale, identified six dimensions of political party perception in Great Britain (Honesty, Spirited, Image, Leadership, Toughness, Uniqueness). However, Aaker's scale includes some characteristics (for example good-looking, young), which are not personality traits. It is additionally subject to a possible error resulting from the transfer to political marketing of the assumptions used in consumer marketing. For example, many features which can be used in the description of products and services cannot be used with equal success in the description of the political market. Gorbaniuk, Krzyszycha & Holewa (2010) used a lexical approach to personality research which allowed them to identify three dimensions of political party personality in Poland (Openness to cooperation, Strength, Antisociality). These dimensions were used in another study (Krzyszycha & Gorbaniuk, 2011). The results showed that the greater the similarity between one's own perceived personality and the personality of a political party, the more positive is one's attitude towards a party and the greater its preference.

Although a political party can be treated as a brand, we need to remember that this perspective leads to certain simplifications. The specificity of a party in comparison to other brands is that it is composed of people and perceived through the people who represent it. Judgements concerning a party are at least partly based on judgements concerning particular politicians. Social psychology provides a useful theoretical background to analyse the phenomena connected with perception and factors affecting perception, such as labelling, stereotypes and prejudices (Aronson, 2011; Wojciszke, 2014).

The Current Study

The analysis carried out above shows that political parties may be perceived using the same characteristics which are attributable to people (Holewa & Gorbaniuk, 2009). The research methodology on party personality used so...