Exploring Kapferer's Brand Identity Prism Applicability in Indian Political Marketing Aspect With Special Focus to Youth Voters

Introduction

Research on political marketing has established itself as a strong emerging area of distinctive marketing research (Kotler and Levy, 1969; Luck, 1969; Kotler, 1972; Enis, 1973; Hunt, 1976; Arndt, 1978; Arndt, 1982; Hunt and Burnett, 1982; Hunt, 1983; Levy, 2002). It is true that the political parties function like a brand and the potential voter uses to choose them like they make their choices about any product brand (Reeves et al, 2006). As per the UNFPA report (2014) India has world’s largest youth population and by the year 2020 India is set to become the youngest country in the world. Considering the reality, it can be said that, today Indian youth generation are not interested in politics or in casting the votes. There may be a possible reason the political parties are not able to project themselves as effective brand (Aaker, 1991, 1996; Keller, 1993; Kapferer, 2004; Lantieri et al., 2009) which can influence, connect or engage the youth population of modern India. The study aims to explore the Indian youth perception relating to brand image of the political parties (Kavanagh, 1995; Kotler and Kotler, 1999; Schweiger and Adami, 1999; White and de Chernatony, 2002; Needham, 2005), which may generate interest within the potential voters. In this present study, we have tried to apply the Kapferer’s brand identity prism (Kapferer, 2012) to find the brand identity dimensions of Indian political parties. The current research revolves around the major objective to identify and arrange the different elements or items of the political brand (French& Smith, 2010; Phipps et al., 2010; Smith and French, 2009; Winther, 2015) based on importance and priorities. The current research has also tried to identify the prevailing lacunae of the political brands in India to generate the unique identity and brand values of the political parties (Aaker, 1996).