Political marketing tools used in pre-election campaigns in Armenia: comparative analysis of 2013 presidential and 2017 parliamentary election campaigns

Abstract

The election campaigns in the Republic of Armenia have received little academic interest from the political marketing perspective, hence the aim of this capstone thesis to identify the political marketing tools and techniques that were used during the election campaigns, understand their effectiveness in transferring the political promise and to explore whether the change of the political system affected the usage of tools. For this purpose, the electoral campaigns of the Republican Party of Armenia (RPA) Serzh Sargsyan and Heritage Party candidate Raffi Hovhannisyan in 2013 presidential elections, as well as, after the constitutional change of the political context, of RPA and Tsarukyan bloc 2017 parliamentary elections are studies. The social media, video ads, booklets/flyers, election programs, campaign finances of each campaign were scrutinized as candidates’ channels of communication. Visual and written content analysis was carried out to interpret the above-mentioned data. For analyzing the media coverage and the social media environment of the campaigns, reports drafted by the Yerevan Press Club and Region Research Center were used. The two sets of case studies have revealed that the most popular political marketing tool throughout the studied campaigns was the leader image. Next in the row were the policy focus and the ideology. Increase in the usage of social media, reduction of broadcast media ad budget, diversification of political marketing channels and more trends have been identified. Not enough evidence was found to claim that the political system change influenced the campaigning behavior of the electioneers. It also showed that 66.7% of actual and communicated political products were corresponding, showing that the used political marketing tools were successful in transferring the ‘political promise’.