A DEEPER INSIGHT INTO POLITICAL BRAND TRUST – HOW TRUST IN PARTY'S LEADER AND PARTY'S PROGRAM INFLUENCES VOTING STABILITY?

• Published in: Economic and Social Development: Book of Proceedings pp. 102 - 108
• Main Author: Pap, Ana
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: Varazdin Varazdin Development and Entrepreneurship Agency (VADEA) 02.07.2020
• Subjects: Alliances; Brand loyalty; Consumer behavior; Consumers; Decision making; Elections; Influence; Marketing; Political behavior; Political leadership; Political parties; Politicians; Politics; Preferences; Primaries & caucuses; Questionnaires; Regression analysis; Researchers; Social sciences; Stability; Statistical analysis; Voter behavior; Voters; Voting
• ISSN: 1849-6903

In recent times, political behavior has become unstable, which led to the fact that analyzing voter choice and behavior has become inevitable for a better understanding of voters. Many researchers have accepted political parties and politicians as brands and political branding has been described as a new area of research. Many studies in the field of political marketing proved that political brand trust positively influences voters' loyalty and their voting stability. This study is trying to get deeper insights into political brand trust by analyzing political brand trust from two aspects: trust in the political party's leader and trust in the political party's program. The purpose of this research is to determine the differences in the influence of trust in the political party's leader and trust in the political party's program on voting stability. In other words, this research is trying to answer the question: What drives voting stability more - trust in the political party's leader or trust in the political party's program? The primary research was conducted in five counties from Eastern Croatia using a highly structured questionnaire. For the purposes of obtaining survey results, regression analysis was performed with the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) 21.0. The study results confirmed the positive influence of both trust in the political party's leader and the political party's program on voting stability. Results have shown that trust in political party's leader(s) had a much stronger influence on voting stability than trust in the political party's program. The study has resulted in practical implications for political party marketing managers.