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 Date: May 28 th, 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 2
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 2
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 3
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. 4
2. Theoretical Framework 2.1 Brand Personality Basically brand in marketing is definite as name, term, design and symbol identify the product as well as differentiate from the others. Brand consists of many aspects such as brand image, brand attitude and brand equity. Brand personality is a component of brand identity. (Aaker, 1996) Personality is defined as the collections of individual characteristics that make a person unique, and which control and individual s responses to and relationship with the external environment. (Blythe J, 1997, p. 39) There is a study identifying that the personality characteristics influence the consumers on choosing the products. Three properties of the personality explain the nature of it. First, personality reflects individual differences as one personality is a combination of different factors. Second, personality is consistent and enduring. Therefore, the marketers cannot change the personality of the consumers but they can attract them by creating their own brand personality relevant to the personality of the target customers. Third, personality can change by the important change in the life. (Aaker, 1996) A product as a person needs personality to create the stronger brand image. Moreover, a product with personality has potential to gain a better relationship with the customers since the product with a clear personality can position image in the customer s mind easily. In addition, the brand personality helps the product communicate with the customer in order to contribute the maximum benefit. Also Brand personality helps the company understand the perception of customer having towards their image by giving them the choices of brand personality in marketing research. Giving the uniqueness for a product, the brand personality is considered to influence the success in term of preference and choices for the customers. A product which establishes personality well also ties the emotion of the customer to its brand, resulting in creating trust and loyalty from the customers. The task of the marketers is to find out which brand personality attracts the targeted market the most and deliver that personality to them. (Aaker, 1996) Aaker (1997) defines brand personality as the set of human characteristics associated with a given brand. The brand personality consists of many traits developed into specific five dimensions, called characteristics. Each characteristic has its own traits which are the subsets that will complete the characteristics to be a clear personality. It is explained that the brand personality of a brand 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 (2002) developed the trait of personality in 16 traits from 42 traits of human personality. Each trait can summarize in the characters of human. According to Aaker, the traits can be grouped in 5 main characteristics, which are the five dimensions of brand personality (Figure 2) 5
Brand personality Sincerity Excitement Competence Sophistication Ruggedness - Down-to-earth - Honest - Wholesome - Cheerful - Daring - Spirited - Imaginative - Up-to-date - Reliable - Intelligent - Successful - Upper class - Charming - Outdoorsy - Tough Figure 1: Five dimensions of brand personality (Aaker) To formulate the questionnaires, the authors need same amount of traits in each characteristic. Accordingly we adapted the traits from David A. Aaker, Building Strong Brands (1996). The traits are chosen by the appropriate meanings supporting each other. Brand personality Sincerity Excitement Competence Sophistication Ruggedness - Down-to-earth - Honest - Wholesome - Cheerful - Daring - Spirited - Imaginative - Up-to-date - Reliable - Intelligent - Confident - Successful - Upper class - Charming - Feminine - Glamorous - Outdoorsy - Tough - Western - Rugged Figure 2: Five dimensions of brand personality (Aaker) after adaptation Therefore the chosen traits are Confident in Competence, Feminine and Glamorous in Sophistication, and Western and Rugged in Ruggedness. The traits are chosen also from the meaning in Thai language as it is the language of questionnaires. The trait Feminine might have ambiguous meaning but it has special meaning in Thai as being soft and sensitive. The brand personality has a concept of positioning the personality with specific meanings to the customers. Therefore the customers will use brands with personality to build their own self-image. Furthermore, the brand personality help distinct the product out of the crowds when it come to the competition. Then, it will help the products differentiate themselves, resulting into the competitive advantage. The individuals use the brand with the personality that they perceive themselves to be, which can be called Self-Concept. Self-concept can be defined as the totality of the individual s thoughts and feelings having reference to himself as an object (Rosenberg, 1979, p. 7). In the other words, they use the brands with the personality to describe their particular personality. (Diamantopoulos A.; Smith G.; Grime I,2007). 6
2.2 Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC) IMC is the management concept that emerge all aspects of marketing communication to build positive relationships with customers and other stakeholders. It is a customercentric that begins with an understanding of the customer. This approach goes far beyond demographics to uncover the customer segments and consumer motivation that drive purchasing decisions. Additional, IMC is data-driven, which depends on information about customers behaviors and preferences, to identify and understand a company s best customers and to make informed decisions regarding how to communicate with them. IMC not only integrates the marketing communications such as advertising, direct and e-commerce marketing and public relations, but also advocates the alignment of all of a company s business processes from product development to customer service (Journal of Integrated Marketing Communication, n.d.). Elements for IMC strategy (Fill, Ch, 2005, P.297-305) In figure 4 show the elements for integration for IMC strategy Relationships Structures Promotional Tools Brands Messages Employees Technology Agencies IMC strategy Figure 3: Elements for integration Promotional tools The messages conveyed by each of the promotional tools should be harmonized in order that audiences perceive a consistent set of meanings within the messages they receive (Fill, Ch, 2005). One of the translations of this perspective is that the key visual triggers (design, colors and form) used in advertising should be replicated across the range of promotional tools used, including point of purchase and sales force. Web-enabled communications, customer service and sale promotions can be linked together, through database applications, and all are designed to communicate the same core message (Fill, Ch, 2005). 7
Messages The theme and the set of core messages used in any campaign should first be determined and then deployed as an integrated whole across the promotional mix. A consideration of the most appropriate mix of communication tools and media might be a better starting point when formulating campaigns. Marketing mix The price and associated values, the product, in terms of the quality, design and tangible attributes, the manner and efficiency of the service delivery people and where and how it is made available, such as the location, Website, retailer/dealer reputation and overall service quality need to be perceived by customers as a coordinated and consistent whole. These aspects with brands are aspects of a consumer s brand experience and are used to develop images that through time may shape brand reputations. Branding Brands are themselves a form of integration that means internally organizations need to be sufficiently coordinated so that the brand is perceived externally as consistent and uniform. However, brands need to appeal to a number of different audiences (White, 2000) and to do this it is necessary to develop brands that appeal to diverse consumer groups. This requires high level of communication integration, a need to develop a series of innovative messages based around a core proposition. Company need to use multiple executions delivered through a variety of media, each complementing and reinforcing the core brand proposition that the audience is more likely to be surprised or reminded of the brand (and its essence). A further dimension of the branding factor concerns the role of corporate brands and issues of corporate communication. Strategy IMC is regarded by some as a means of using the tools of the promotional mix in a more efficient and synergistic manner. However, IMC requires understanding at the roots in the overall business strategy of an organization to create the messages to customers. Using Porter s generic strategy, if low-cost strategy, message should stress any price advantage that customers might benefit from. If company using differentiation strategy, company should emphasis on particular attributes that convey the added value and enable clear positioning. Employees All employees should adopt a customer focus and live the brand. This can be achieved partially through the use of training courses and in-house documentation, this usually requires a change of culture and that means a longer period of adjustment and the adoption of new techniques, procedures and ways of thinking and behaving. IMC should be concerned with blending internal and external messages so that there is clarity, consistency and reinforcement of the organization s (or brand s) core proposition. 8
The seven elements effectively lead to the relationships with the customers. However, the authors will use only five elements from the IMC model according that the information of politics in term of Employees, Technology and Agencies is confidential inside the parties. 9
3. Methodology 3.1 The choice of topic The chosen topic of this research paper is the brand personality in Thai politics aimed to represent one aspect of political marketing. The political situation in Thailand interests the authors, so this project will have the topic of political marketing in Thailand. Comparing politics with business, consumers are the voters who choose the products, which are candidates from political parties. However, political products are different since they are abstract unlike other tangible products. So, in political case to build brand image and good perception in customer minds are the most important. The brand image consists of many aspects as well as it is too broad for the paper. Therefore, we chose the brand personality, a crucial part of brand image, to scope down our paper. Moreover, brand personality delivers the human traits, which can influence the human decision. Then, we range our research narrower with the targeted population, which will be the generation Y voters in Thailand. Generation Y voters are the people who were born in year between 1977 and 1994, but in this case we will focus only on the people born in year between 1977 and 1991, since the valid age of voters by the law are between 18 and 31 years old. Also they are the second biggest group of voters after the Generation X. The reason why we decided to do research on Generation Y is that they will be the voters in the long run according to their age as well as their flexible personality comparing to Generation X people who might have strong belief and stereotypes towards politics. (Evans, M.; Jamal, A. and Foxall, G., 2006, p. 109-110) The political brand personality will be investigated on the two main political parties as well as their leaders. Then, we will compare whether in each party the brand personality of the party itself and the party leader are compatible or not. Furthermore, we will examine which influences the voters more, the party or the party leader. 3.2 The chosen theories The purpose of this research paper is to investigate the brand personality for Generation Y Thai voters, therefore the relevant theories will be chosen. To suit this paper, firstly the brand personality concept is the main framework since it will clarify the brand personality as well as explain them. Therefore, we will have the basic framework to collect the right data and construct the research afterwards. Then, the international communication process will be applied in order to provide the process from Encoder to Decoder. Finally, the IMC concept will be used in the recommendation to suggest how they should deliver the appropriate brand personality to the Thai voters. 10
3.2.1 Brand Personality concept The first chosen theory is the brand personality to explain more what the brand personalities are. In this theory it will be identified what the brand personality are by the definition, which is the basic information of this paper. Moreover, this theory will be used in forming questionnaire and focus group to collect the necessary empirical findings. 3.2.2 Integrated Marketing Communication concept The second chosen theory is the IMC, integrated marketing communication as a method to deliver the brand personality to customers in order to investigate how the political parties communicate the brand personality to the consumers, which are the voters. 3.3 The choice of collecting information To achieve the purpose of the project, the choice of collecting information should be compatible in order to gather the right information. The aim of collecting information in this paper is to investigate which brand personality of Political parties attracts Thai voters the most. Accordingly, both primary data and secondary data will be collected to reach the aim of the research. 3.3.1 Secondary Data Mostly the information will be gathered via the Internet especially the basic data of the research about the general information in Thailand. We try to use the reliable websites such as the formal website of the Interior Minister to provide the population number which will affect to the number of the primary data we should collect as well as the scope of this research paper. The information about the rules of Thai election is also from the reliable Internet source. 3.3.2 Primary Data For the primary data, the decision was made on using Preliminary Interview and Questionnaires as the main empirical data collecting. Preliminary Interview The author firstly intended to use focus group as the channel to scope the words of brand personality down. However, we found out that it is not too broad to use all the words such as subsets in each personality in the questionnaire. Plus, we will have all the words to fulfill the brand personality, which will make our paper more reliable. Then we decided to do preliminary interview which is a semi-structured interview with the Thai people in each region to gather the ideas towards the brand personality of the parties and the parties leaders as well as how they get the messages from the marketing communication. 11
The semi-structured interview gives us the first information from the interviewee under control of the authors in order to limit the information to be inside the topic. Following Fischer (2006), the interviewee will give in-depth and open opinion inside the guideline that the authors control conversations. As a result, we have clearer picture for the questionnaires, for example how we should form the questionnaires leading to the correct information. Furthermore, our thesis also investigates the marketing communication to approach the voters rightly, and the preliminary interview gives us the information about how they receive the political information. Question 1. What do you think about the brand personality of the political parties and the leaders in Thailand? 2. Which personality matches each party in your opinion? 3. What ways of communication do you think you receive the information from the political parties? 4. What is the ideal brand personality of the political parties in your opinion? Purpose To gain the rough information from the Thai perspective in term of brand personality in politics in order to formulate the questionnaire. To pull out some opinion towards each party in term of brand personality in politics in order to formulate the questionnaire. To gain information about the way of communication to deliver the brand personality in order to formulate the questionnaire. To gain some opinion about the ideal brand personality of the political parties in order to formulate the questionnaire. Figure 4: Question and purpose from preliminary interview Steps of conducting preliminary interview Preparation: First, the authors will inform the participants about the objective of the interview. Plus, the authors will create several questions constructed by the theory in the aim of finding the necessary information. Then, reminding them again before the interview takes place. Question Developing: Forming the questions from the frameworks, which will not be over ten questions in order to give the participants time to discuss and get their opinion. The types of the question are the following: 1. Behaviors 2. Opinions/values 12
3. Feelings 4. Knowledge 5. Sensory 6. Background/demographics Session Planning: The interview will not last more than one hour and will be conducted in persons and also via Skype according to the distance of the interacting persons. The participants will be informed about the goal of the session and also the details. Moreover, all the conversation will be recorded and concluded afterwards. Session Facilitating: The research conductors have to be sure that all the necessary information is already identified and recorded. Then, the information will be ordered and interpreted into the scope of the research paper. The session will be closed afterwards. Questionnaires In order to collect the data covering the generation Y voters from every region, the author will use the questionnaire, as it is proper method to approach the large amount of people. The rating scales questionnaire will be used in part of gathering data about the brand personality of the parties and the leaders. Following Fisher (2004, p.163), the rating scales in questionnaires ask the respondents to rate or evaluate the choices. Accordingly the questionnaires will result the perspective of the Generation Y Thai voters towards the brand personality of the political parties as well as the percentages of the importance of each word. Afterwards, the rating scales questionnaire is used in order to gather the data about the channel of communication during the election process. The questions ask respondents to rate their option in a scale from 5 = Strongly agree with, 4 = Agree with, 3 = Moderate, 2 = Disagree with, 1 = Strongly Disagree with 13
Traits of personalities Which traits do you think most suitable with your ideal political party? Which traits do you think most suitable with your ideal political leader? Down-to-earth 5 4 3 2 1 5 4 3 2 1 Honest 5 4 3 2 1 5 4 3 2 1 Wholesome 5 4 3 2 1 5 4 3 2 1 Cheerful 5 4 3 2 1 5 4 3 2 1 Daring 5 4 3 2 1 5 4 3 2 1 Spirited 5 4 3 2 1 5 4 3 2 1 Imaginative 5 4 3 2 1 5 4 3 2 1 Up-to-date 5 4 3 2 1 5 4 3 2 1 Reliable 5 4 3 2 1 5 4 3 2 1 Intelligent 5 4 3 2 1 5 4 3 2 1 Confident 5 4 3 2 1 5 4 3 2 1 Successful 5 4 3 2 1 5 4 3 2 1 Upper-class 5 4 3 2 1 5 4 3 2 1 Charming 5 4 3 2 1 5 4 3 2 1 Feminine 5 4 3 2 1 5 4 3 2 1 Glamorous 5 4 3 2 1 5 4 3 2 1 Outdoorsy 5 4 3 2 1 5 4 3 2 1 Tough 5 4 3 2 1 5 4 3 2 1 Western 5 4 3 2 1 5 4 3 2 1 Rugged 5 4 3 2 1 5 4 3 2 1 The authors divided the questionnaires into 6 parts: Part 1: Profile of respondent This part is to get the background of the respondents especially classification the region of respondents Part 2: brand personality of currently Thai political parties This part investigates the brand personality of currently main political parties which are Power People party, the present Thai government party, and Thai Democrat party. 14
Part 3: brand personality of currently Thai political leaders This part investigates the brand personality of currently main political leaders who are Samak Sundoravej, the leader of Power People party and the present Thai prime minister, and Abhisit Vejjajiva, the leader of Thai democratic party. Part 4: The ideal brand personality of currently Thai political parties and leaders This part investigates the ideal brand personality of Thai ideal political party and the ideal leader from Generation Y Thai voters. Part 5: Other information about the election This part is to get the information about the election that voters vote for political party or vote for the leader of the party. If voters vote for the party that mean party is more important than the product which is the leader, in the other way if voters vote for the leader that mean the product of the party is more important. Part 6: The channel of communication This part is to get the information about the channels of communication that political party and leader used to communicate with the voters. Also it will investigate which way influents the decision of voters. The methodology and data gathering are as the following: Population and Sampling techniques According to official website from Thai Ministry of Interior, the population in Thailand is 63,038,247 people but the number of Thai citizen who have name in census registration is 61,544,806 (Department of Provincial Administration, January, 2008). In order to reduce the margin of error and make the thesis more reliable, the authors have to take a sample that is representative for the whole population (Fisher C., 2007, P.189). By this way, the authors apply cluster-sampling technique, dividing the panels and questionnaires into geographic groups. According to Thai national official statistic website divided Thailand in five Regions, which are Northern, Southern, Northeastern, Central and Bangkok excluded from Central regions according to the massive population. The number of population and percentage are in the following table (Figure 5a & 5b). Geographic Number of population % Bangkok 5,528,241 9 Central part 15,062,417 24 Northern part 11,375,521 18 Southern part 8,521,845 14 Northern-east part 21,056,782 35 15
Total 61,544,806 100 Figure 5a: The geographic and number of population % Population Northern 18% 9% Bangkok 24% Central 14% Southern 35% Northern-east Figure 5b: % Thai population divided by regions Due to the limitation of time in gathering and reliability of information, with the number of population, 61,544,806, the authors cannot provide the information that can represent all of population within two months so we scope the number of population by using the generation type of demographic, which Evan, Jamal and Foxall (2006) divided groups of consumer demographic into the following; Generation Y who was born between 1977 and 1994, aging between 14 and 31 years old at the present, Generation X who were born from 1966 to 1976, aging between 32 and 42 years old, and Baby boomer generation who was born from 1945 to 1965, aging from 43 to 63 (Evans, M., Jamal, A. and Foxall, G., 2006, P.109-112). Therefore, the authors divided the group of Thai population by aging of demographic (Figure 6). 16
Generation Age Number of population % New Generation 1-13 11,967,747 20 Generation Y 14-31 17,748,475 29 Generation X 32-42 11,852,155 19 Baby Boomer 43-63 14,922,608 24 Over 63 63-100 up 5,049,035 8 Total 61,544,806 100 Figure 6a: The generation of population Generation Generation Y 18 31 years old Age Number of population 18-31 13,893,893 23 % Figure 6b: The number of population of Generation Y who can vote The authors chose Generation Y who are in the age between 18 and 31 since the enactment of voter in election is aging equal or more than18 years old. This population is 23% (from 18 to 31 years old) of all population, which is the second number of Thai population (Figure 6c). The supporting reason to choose this generation to be focal population is that this generation is the youngest generation who has right for voting and can be the potential voter base for the political parties in future. Moreover, generation Y was born in information revolution era that more accepting of multi-nationals and less interested in protesting and this group is useful clues as the sort of message and media to use and reach them (Evans, M., Jamal, A. and Foxall, G., 2006, P.109). The authors didn t pick Baby Boomer to be the focal group since this group of people have aging more than 40 years old who may have high brand loyalty with one of the political parties and hard to convince and change their mind. 17
% Population (divided age under 18 ) Baby Boomer 24% Over 63 Age unde 18 X Gen 19% Y Gen 18 31 Figure 6c: % population, which combine age under 18 years old According to official website from Thai Ministry of Interior, the population of Thai people who have age between 18 31 years old are divided in following table (Figure 7a and 7b). (Department of Provincial Administration, n.d.) Geographic Number of population % Bangkok 1,190,952 9 Central part 3,336,681 24 Northern part 2,443,779 18 Southern part 2,024,902 15 Northern-east part 4,897,579 34 Total 13,893,893 100 Figure 7a: Number of population age between 18 31 years old 18
Northern - 18% Bangkok - 9% Central - 24% Northern-East - 34% Southern - 15% Figure 7b: % population, which age between 18 31 years old For questionnaire, the authors use Saunders (2002) with 5% acceptable marginal error; population 10 million will use minimum in 384 copies. Moreover, there will be five groups divided by the regions in order to make the information more reliable the authors weigh the number of questionnaires by the percent statistic of population. To distribute the questionnaires all over Thailand, we employ a part-time surveyor who has a Master s degree in Business Administration (MBA) majoring in Marketing. As being an expert in contributing questionnaires, she has connection with her team works in the universities in every region of Thailand. She has been experiencing in this questionnaire field, so it can be guaranteed that the obtained information can be trusted. The approaches to gathering primary data are as below: 1. Target respondents - Preliminary Interviews Thai citizen who have age between 19 and 31 years old (5 persons) - Questionnaires Thai citizen who have age between 19 and 31 years old (Bangkok 35 copies, Central 92 copies, Northern 69 copies, Southern 58 copies and Northern-east 130 copies) 2. Distribution of questionnaires - Questionnaires are sent by e-mail - Hire the distributor in Bangkok, Thailand to distribute the questionnaires in 5 parts. 19
3. Number of questionnaires distributed 4. Questionnaires duration - 450 copies Thai citizen who have age between 19 and 31 years old according to the 2007 election. (Bangkok 41 copies, Central 108 copies, Northern 80 copies, Southern 68 copies and Northern-east 153 copies) - 21/04/2008 16/05/2008 3.4 Analysis of Information The main information in this paper is the primary data, which is the result of preliminary interviews and questionnaires. After that, the raw information will be preceded into the quantitative information, which can be percentage in order to organize the information after gathering. The secondary data from the reliable sources will be summarized in the finding part first and used in the analysis to scope the information as well as being the necessary basic information of the paper. The brand personality framework will be firstly the outline of the preliminary interview and questionnaires. Secondly there will also be the framework of analyzing the data into the result of which aspect brand personality influence the Thai Generation Y voters the most. Not only the interviewees give us the opinion of the politics in term of brand personality, they are also scrutinized on how the proper communication gives that aspect to them as well as how they perceive the present parties and leaders. After getting the ideal brand personality of political parties and leaders, the Integrated Marketing Communication Model will be applied in order to pursuit the right way of communication to get the right perception from the voters. The model of IMC will be useful since the concept of marketing will be adapted into politics as well as provide the suitable communication with marketing techniques. This analysis depends on the result of the data about how they perceive the parties and the leaders from the aspect of brand personality. Finally, the recommendation will be made according to the IMC model as well. 3.5 Limitation According to the time limited as well as the distance of the authors and the focal country of the research, the authors necessarily use the secondary source such as the internet and the distributors to spread questionnaires. The authors also beware of the information by using only reliable source. Short time is also one of the important things that limit this paper. The other limitation is the election actually held in December last year, which means it was about five months before writing this thesis. Although the election was held not so long before, the Power People Party has been running the government for a while, which can change the perception of the people towards the party from during the election and after being the government. Language barrier also limited the thesis since both of the authors are not English native speakers. Limitation of the Theoretical Framework in term of analyzing IMC is the authors cannot find the confidential information about employees, technology and 20
agencies from political party so the authors will analyze only the other four main factors in the elements for integration for IMC. Another limitation comes from the focal population, Generation Y voters, which are 23 percents of all the population in Thailand. Therefore, this thesis cannot represent the whole population. 21
4. Finding 4.1 Secondary Data 4.1.1 Generation Y voters The targeted group for this paper is the voters in Generation Y which means the people who were born between 1977 and 1994. The thesis also pick only the people who have the right to vote in the 2007 election which means they are in the age of 19-31 nowadays. The unique characteristics of this group have three main descriptions. Firstly they are racial and ethically diverse as they were born in the time of globalization. Second, they are independent. They are surrounded by the divorce, single parents, day care and technological revolution, for example. Lastly, they are empowered, unlike the older generations; they learned to make their own decision since the young age. (Evans M., Jamal A, Foxall, 2006, p 109) Moreover, they are also described as being skeptical, adaptable and self-image. They are now very important in the consumer behavior as they are the consumers. The olds of this group are also in the beginning of working age, perceived as the future since they are much active and self-driven into the success.(usatoday, 2008) In Thailand, the Generation Y is also the biggest population with the number of 17,748,475. After cutting the people without voting right in the 2007 election, the number was down to 13,893,893. (Department of Provincial Administration, 2008) 4.1.2 Power People Party The PPP was actually founded in 1998 but at first they did not get involved much in the political election. Then, after the coup d'état, the politicians, who were the members of Thai Rak Thai Party (TRT) which was banded by the military, has to find a new party, so most of them moved to the PPP party as well as the former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinnawatra who is one of the administrators of the party. The focused policies are also furthered from the TRT policies. Accordingly, the party is known as the nominee of the TRT party who still has a huge group of population as the supporters especially in the Northeastern, which contains the most population in Thailand. (Power People Party, n.d) 4.1.3 Thai Democrat Party The oldest political in Thailand and probably in South East Asia was founded on April 6 th, 1946, about a decade after changing to democracy of Thailand. The party has had seven leaders already and three of them served the country as the Prime Ministers. The present party leader is Mr. Abhisit Vejjajiva, who has been in charge for two years. The name of the party was influenced by the Democrat Party in the US as it has the same motto to fight for the democracy for the country. (Democrat Party, n.d) 22
Sixty years of the party, it has been into the democratic system and through some military power, still it can remain the party to be the oldest political party in Thailand. Lately, they have been the main Opposition party as they lost most of the time in the election. Although the winning party has come and gone, the TDP is still in the system as one of the biggest party, which serves the country mostly as the Opposition. (Democrat Party, n.d) According to the result of 2007 election, the TDP gained the votes from the Southern part the most followed by Bangkok. 4.1.4 The 2007 Election In order to investigate the right brand personality of Thai generation Y voters, the author focused on the last election in 2007, in which there were two main parties in the competition to be the government. The 2007 election was also interesting because it was the democratic election after the power was seized by a coup d état from the military in 2006. The military has been controlling the government for one year and half until last year they leased the power into the form of the governmental election as it was mentioned in the introduction. The reason of the coup d état was that the prime minister at that time, Thaksin Shinnawatra of Thai Rak Thai Party (TRT), was convicted of some corruptions as well as there was a big protest against him. During the protest, there was also the re election and he also won that. However, the military decided to overthrew him by giving the reason of remaining the security of the country. At that time some people who supported the TRT party took that action of the military as robbing the democratic victory. (Manager, n.d) After being in charge of the power, the military held the democratic election in 2007. This time all the important actors of TRT as well as the party were banned from the election. However, the newborn party was established as Power People Party (PPP) which is seen as the nominee of the previous TRT since all the members were once the supporters of Thaksin Shinnawatra. The result was as everybody expected. PPP won the 2007 election to be the government of Thailand. As a result, Samak Sundoravej, the party leader, turned to be the Prime Minister of Thailand, whom everybody perceives as the follower of Thaksin. (Manager, n.d) The other main party of this election was Thai Democrat Party (TDP), the oldest political party of Thailand. In this election, it was the first time of the party with the new party leader, Abhisit Vejjajiva, the youngest party leader in Thai history. The person was perceived as the gentleman of Thai politics. The party, although it has experienced a long time in Thai politics, has been losing lately in the elections. And this time there was no difference even though the leader seems to be a beloved one of the Thai people. (Democrat Party, n.d) 4.1.5 Result from 2007 election In order to measure the success of each party, the number of Members of Parliament from 2007 Election that they gained from the election is an obvious result. The result will be divided into the regions of Thailand (Figure 9). (Manager, n.d.) 23
Bangkok Bangkok is divided into twelve districts in which there are three Members of Parliament (MPs), so totally there are 36 MPs. In 36 MPs, 10 are from Power People Party and 26 are from Thai Democrat Party. By that, from the total amount of MPs, the PPP gained 27 percents and TDP gained 73 percents. (Manager, n.d.) Central The Central region includes also the eastern area of Thailand, in which there are 26 provinces. In total there are 95 MPs in this region. PPP has 38 MPs which equals 40 percents; meanwhile, TDP has 35 MPs which equals 36 percents. (Manager, n.d.) Northern Northern has 77 MPs from 16 provinces. PPP has 39 MPs, which is 51 percents; meanwhile TDP has 16 MPs, which equals 21 percents. (Manager, n.d.) Northeastern Northeastern is the biggest region with the highest population in Thailand. It contains 19 provinces with 132 MPs. PPP won 98 seats from this region, which is 74 percents. TDP has only 6 in total, which equals 4 percents. (Manager, n.d.) Southern Southern has 56 Mps from 14 provinces. PPP has 2, which is 4 percents. In this region, TDP won 49 seats, which equals 88 percents. (Manager, n.d.) Party Members of Parliament from 2007 election Bangkok Central Northern Northeastern Southern PPP 10 38 39 98 2 TDP 26 35 16 6 49 Others 0 22 22 28 5 Total 36 95 77 132 56 Figure 8: Members of Parliament from 2007 election from each region 4.1.6 Communication 4.1.6.1 Promotional Tools The usage of marketing distribution especially in advertising is nowadays very high in the politics especially during the elections. The main promotional tools for the political parties are billboard, television, speech, radio and internet. 24
Power People Party The party is perceived as very well done in marketing communication. They have strategies in marketing furthered from the Thai Rak Thai Party who was successful also in the past. They have the strategies in marketing as the following: (Nidambe11, 2008) - Plan the marketing tools from outside to inside (outside-in, not inside-out planning). - Use the brand and celebrity contacts through the fate towards the leader of the party. - Use the marketing communication continuously. - Use zero based message delivery. - Aim to create the relationship with the people (relationship marketing). - Use the integrated communication with highest quality in all forms of contact. - Keep on doing the research and accountability. To accomplish these strategies, the party used mainly the following tools of advertising: Television During the election, the party launched six spots in the television which the outstanding one called Happiness. In the mentioned spot, the happiness of the worker class is outstandingly focused. Example of advertisement (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmsa9knsd-s ) Billboard The billboards contain mostly contain the huge loco name of the party. Moreover, the used messages are short, up-to-date and hit by heart, for example, give us back the constitution which is the issue during the election. (Power People Party, n.d.) Speech Figure 9a: PPP s Billboard The party focused a lot on giving speeches as we can see from how often they gave especially from the leader. The place they used was always at the field able to contain a huge number of people. 25