The effect of personality congruence in internal party election : a conceptual framework for political marketing in Malaysia

This article aims to explore the efficacy of cognitive approach, to identify the ways of how marketers
understand consumer purchase decision and to propose a conceptual framework for the development of
voting behaviour from political marketing perspectives in Malaysia. Using self-image congruency theory
as the initial narrowed theory, this proposition is in line with the theory from prominent researcher in
political communication, political psychology as well as candidate image study, who identified that
candidate image is a cognitive representation of a particular political candidate that is being held by a
voter. In this present paper, it is presumed that voter’s evaluation on candidate image in internal party
election initially requires a substantial cognitive effort and affective ways of how voters process and
respond to the political information that construe the candidate image. Moreover, the voting act is
presumed as a voter’s self expression, the expression of who they are. Using personal and religiosity
values as the key variables, it is possible to propose that the similarity-attraction or self-image congruence
between the voters and the candidates were proposed to enhance the voters’ self expression and
perception on candidate’s image that subsequently influence the voter’s intention or decision to vote.
This paper is the first attempt in the literature of political marketing that integrates psychological
characteristics, consumer behaviour theory and political decision in its proposition for conceptual
framework of voting behaviour in internal party election. The framework looks at the perspective of
information processing capacity and cognitive attributes towards decision to vote.