Abstract:
Political branding is one of the fastest growing areas of political marketing scholarship. Despite the growing interest in the field, the majority of studies have focused on branding to win elections and political branding in advanced democracies. There is very little analysis of political branding by parties in power or in developing democracies. This thesis contributes to political branding research by exploring the design and delivery of political brand promise from a developing democracy’s context. This thesis argues that offering relevant and valuable brand promises and delivering on them in government to enhance the ‘moment of truth’ experiences of political consumers is central to political branding. This thesis adopts an interpretive approach, a social constructionist epistemology and a grounded theory methodology to code and analyse extensive data from the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and the 2016 elections in Ghana. The research utilised qualitative data from 139 document and communication materials, 33 elite interviews and four focus group discussions and ideas from existing literature. This thesis creates a well-formulated and data-driven theoretical framework that offers five-stage strategic approaches (gather information, plan and design promise, internalise, communicate and deliver) for the design and delivery of political brand promise as a strategic tool for building a stronger political brand beyond elections. This new and globally applicable theoretical framework can be used in both developed and developing democracies to facilitate teaching and learning, further research and also guide political elites in their political marketing game. The thesis findings and the emergent theoretical framework provide comprehensive understanding into the design and delivery of the political brand promise as a strategic branding tool and thus, make significant contribution to knowledge in a rapidly growing field of political branding.
