Buyer Behavior

Students: Andrea Carrillo-Andrade

Lecturer: Julie Harpley
July 4, 2021
ESE, Florence
Table of content

Executive summary .......................................................................................................... 3

Introduction ...................................................................................................................... 3
Methodology..................................................................................................................... 4
Analysis ............................................................................................................................ 5
First round ..................................................................................................................... 6
Second round ................................................................................................................ 8
Findings ............................................................................................................................ 9
Recommendations .......................................................................................................... 10
References ...................................................................................................................... 10
Annex ............................................................................................................................. 13
 Lasso style: the strategy to win elections in a declining democracy

Executive summary

Theories developed in buyer behavior can be useful to develop communicative and

marketing strategies during elections. In this paper, three main theories —public

segmentation, perceptual process, and the creation of brand archetypes— are considered

to examine the campaign of 2021 of Guillermo Lasso, actual president of Ecuador. This

paper scans the evolution of the campaign under the premise that Lasso is perceived as a

warrior archetype and its implications.

Introduction

Representative democracy —as a system of government— was built to choose and

replace governments through free and fair elections. Then, citizens would vote according

to the candidate that represents them the most (social and political concerns, economic

policies and other issues that impact the population) and according to their ideology

(Diamond, 2004). However, nowadays mainly because of the phenomenon of populism,

democracy has been seen as a political marketplace instead of a system of government.

Populism arose as a strategy (Weyland, 2001), a style (Moffitt and Tormey, 2014;

Roberts, 1995), ideology (Mudde, 2004) or speech (Ungureanu and Serrano, 2018) to

capture votes. Candidates often use populist rhetoric and practices that allow the

incorporation of other subaltern groups, with the risk of observing democracy from an

instrumental perspective. That is why scholars (López-Paredes et al., 2020) advice that

populism can privilege the access of an individual, group or family to resources, rather

than the collective struggle so that citizen equality becomes a reality. Populism has been

exacerbated because of the appearance of post-truth. It refers to a political culture in

which politics are almost disconnected from policy (the substance of legislation) (Cervi

and Carrillo-Andrade, 2019).

In this context, socio-political marketing becomes fundamental in the creation and

development of strategies: “marketing is engaging customers and managing profitable

customer relationships” (Kother, Armstrong and Opresnik, 2018). We can translate this

definition in political contexts, especially during candidates’ campaigns. Then,

“engaging” is about the creation of a candidate and a speech with whom most of the

population can identify, while “profitable customer relationships” can be translated into

voting and supporting one over the rest. Populism allows citizens to vote for someone not

because of the development of strong identification with them, but because the populist

candidate must be seen as an “empty signifier” (Laclau, 1996) where meanings are

emptied by heterogeneous groups, so they can adapt to citizens demands and needs, such

as a product.

In Latin America, populism has been normalized as a style for vote-catching. In 2021,

during the presidential elections, the candidate Guillermo Lasso become this “empty

signifier” in order to win. This document will analyze the consumer behavior strategies

that Lasso used in his campaign to appeal the population.

Methodology

To achieve the aim of this paper, three main theories will be approached: public

segmentation, perceptual process, and the creation of brand archetypes. To contextualize

them, it is fundamental to conceive consumer behavior as process in which marketers

understand the wants and needs of different consumer segments (Solomon, 2017).

In first place, in politics, market segmentation and product differentiation is widely used:

“product differentiation is the preferred strategy when demand converges for product

offerings, whereas, market segmentation is the preferred strategy when demand diverges”

(Baines et al., 2003). To do so, candidates run elections by presenting issues that they
consider important and that are capable of managing (issue ownership) and determine the

main concerns for segments of population (issue salience) to adapt their speech.

In second place, to vote for a candidate, it is necessary to call the voters’ attention. The

theory of perceptual process states that there are three stages of perception: exposure,

attention, and interpretation. The key for the first stage (exposure) is to make a conscious

impact in peoples’ awareness (Solomon, 2017). In political campaigns, undecided voters

become information seekers; so, effective messages can change their preferences towards

one candidate or another (Kaid, 2002). The second stage (attention) depends on the

characteristics of the stimulus and the recipient. In representative democracies, citizens

pay attention to the candidate to whom they identify the most because of their personal

experience and their social group. However, the use of political storytelling to appeal to

feelings and build new meanings towards the candidates is widely spread (Seargeant,

2020). The last stage, interpretation refers to the meanings people assign to the stimuli

based on their schema or sets of beliefs (Solomon, 2017); here confirmation bias is a

common phenomenon in politics.

In third place, the Brand Asset Valuator Archetypes Model relates brands to personalities.

In the case of politicians, “the brand identity is built to become ownable and all efforts

are expended to transfer this ownability to the masses” (Sood, 2017). To determine the

brand personality, this paper will examine Lasso’s advertisement through semiotics.

Analysis

In February 2021, general elections were held in Ecuador. Sixteen candidates presented

in the first run (some of them did not even reached the 1 % of votes); the two that achieved

the majority to compete in the second round were Andrés Arauz and Guillermo Lasso.

Arauz —theoretically, left-wing candidate— was the candidate supported by Rafael

Correa —significant personalistic leader in the Ecuadorian history— and got 36 % of the

votes. Guillermo Lasso was nearly defeated by Yaku Pérez in a narrow margin (19,74 %

vs 19,39%). Lasso —right-wing candidate— is a former banker and this was the third

time he run for elections.

Figure N.° 1
Ecuador General Elections, 2021

Source: Consejo Nacional Electoral, 2021

Author: Andrea Carrillo-Andrade

First round

In Ecuadorian politics, market segmentation is related to geography: cultural gap among

regions deserves special attention in the formulation of the political campaign. That is

why political advisers tend to develop differentiate advertisements for Costa (centered in

the economy), Sierra (centered in political schemas), Amazon and Galápagos starting at

the issue ownership (product differentiation). In the case of Lasso, during the first round,

he decided to sell himself as a capable person. This way, his slogan was “capability for

the change” and “Vote for capacity” (Figure N.° 2).

 Figure N.° 2
First round advertisement for Lasso’s campaign

Source: @LassoGuillermo (Official Facebook account), February 2021

There are three important details in the slogan. First, the selection of “capacity” as a

characteristic for a politician is directly related to post-truth politics: “people prefer to

vote” (D’Ancona, 2017). Second, when Lasso states that he is capable of changing, he is

developing a rival narrative against Rafael Correa. Correa was the president of Ecuador

from 2007 to 2017; in the last elections his candidate, Lenin Moreno, won the presidency

thanks to his support. In this context, Guillermo Lasso presented himself as the strongest

candidate against the officialism. That is why the advertisement remarks that Lasso means

change. Third, in the first round Lasso wanted to show the political alliance he developed

with the Christian Social political party. That is why he includes the “6” logo.

However, after the first round the statistics showed that Lasso has even less support than

in the last time the run: in 2017, he got 28 % (in 2021, 19 %). What happened is that new

faces such as Xavier Hervas (left-center wing) and Yaku Pérez (indigenous movements)

were the ones that got a great number of votes even they were not mass-mediated. In other

words, Lasso received a lot of attention in mass-media (exposure) as statistics claimed he

was the strongest rival for officialism. However, citizens did not feel represented by him
(interpretation); that is why he developed the message of being capable as the unique

characteristic for differentiation.

After the first round, the numbers showed that people were voting for change and that

they were concerned about social and ecological issues, which ownership was of Hervas

and Perez, respectively. Then, Lasso changed his speech.

Second round

Data showed that Lasso won just in two of the 24 provinces: in Pichincha and Galápagos

(Annex N.° 1). Besides, the margin with his opponent was higher in the Cost and Amazon

regions. Also, the polls showed that young people (from 16 to 35 years) voted for the new

candidates as they were concerned about feminism, LGBTIQ+ rights and ecology

(salience issues). That is why the campaign had to change.

Figure N.° 3
Second round advertisement for Lasso’s campaign

Source: @LassoGuillermo (Official Facebook account), March 2021

Figure N.° 3 shows the new messages that he developed. There are 3 key elements that

show how the evolution of the message. In first place, the removal of the “6” logo is
linked to the claim of renewal. As the Christian Social political party has already a lot of

interpretations among population, it was time to avoid its use. Besides, this political party

was especially strong in the Cost region, but it was demonstrated that it did not implicated

voting for Lasso. In second place, he developed a speech of union instead of more rival

narratives. This is a consequence of a study developed by Juan Mateo Zuniga, a political

adviser, that reflected that Ecuadorian society held politicians responsible for the

confrontational climate and identified this problem as the cause for not achieving

development (Primicias, 2021). In third place, the use of human elements (hands)

corresponding to male and female is an attempt to show a more human and inclusive

approach; besides, these hands as both are using bracelets is addressed to young people.

The problem is that as Lasso is very conservative, this kind of advertisements that try to

show a new perspective and an aim of negotiation still reflect the normative and

conservative way of approaching the salience issues.

All in all, as the message became to be more humble, it had a better outcome: Lasso was

able to win elections in a voting process where the null and white votes achieve top

records (15 %), revealing a population disenchanted about democracy (López-Paredes et

al., 2020).

Findings

According to brand archetypes, Guillermo Lasso can be perceived as a warrior-ego. On

one hand, its characteristics are to be confident, powerful, and energetic. This is linked to

leave legacy, according to adaptations of the wheel of archetypes (Houraghan, 2018),

which makes sense as a candidate must project an idea of future. On the other hand,

citizens understood this by its shadows (destroyer). Then, as political polarization has

been ingrained in Ecuador for the last 15 years, this strategy was not useful.
Recommendations

Mass-media is the responsible of exposing people to certain messages of candidates and

then, citizens begin to pay attention to mainstream, which is very dangerous for the

democracy. However, the way politicians develop their message is crucial to generate

identification (representative democracy) and that is why politicians should be aware of

the needs and desires of the electorate.

Nowadays, as post-truth politics and populism are increasing, democratic procedures are

often questioned because marketing strategies are capable of giving power to a certain

person; nevertheless, politics should pretend to be about identification, about policies and

about strategies to achieve a state of well-being. In other words, it must be worrying that

politics has so many common elements with buyer behavior because citizens should not

be seen as buyers.

References

D’Ancona, M. (2017) Post truth: the new war on truth and how to fight back. London:

Penguin Random House.

Baines, P. R. et al. (2003) ‘Market Segmentation and Product Differentiation in

Political Campaigns: A Technical Feature Perspective’, Journal of Marketing

Management, 19(1–2), pp. 225–249. doi: 10.1080/0267257x.2003.9728208.

Cervi, L. and Carrillo-Andrade, A. (2019) ‘Post-truth and Disinformation : Using

discourse analysis to understand the creation of emotional and rival narratives Post-

verdad y desinformación : uso del análisis del discurso para comprender la creación de

narrativas emocionales y rivales en Brexit Pó’, 10, pp. 125–150.

Diamond, L. (2004) What is Democracy? doi: http://www.standard.

edu/∼/diamond/Iraq/whalsDemocracy 012004.htm.
Electoral, C. N. (2021) Elecciones 2021. Available at:

http://www.cne.gob.ve/web/index.php.

Houraghan, S. (2018) Brand Archetypes: The Definitive Guide [36 Examples].

Available at: https://iconicfox.com.au/brand-archetypes/.

Kaid, L. L. (2002) ‘Political advertising and information seeking: Comparing exposure

via traditional and internet channels’, Journal of Advertising, 31(1), pp. 27–35. doi:

10.1080/00913367.2002.10673658.

Kother, P., Armstrong, G. and Opresnik, M. (2018) Principles of marketing. Pearson

Education Limited.

Laclau, E. (1996) ‘¿Por qué los significantes vacíos son importantes para la política?’,

in Emancipación y Diferencia. Buenos Aires: Ariel.

López-Paredes, M. et al. (2020) El desencanto democrático en América Latina.

Amenazas y oportunidades para el cambio. Capítulo Ecuador. Quito.

Moffitt, B. and Tormey, S. (2014) ‘Rethinking populism. Politics, mediatisation and

political style’, Political Studies, 62(2), pp. 381–397.

Mudde, C. (2004) ‘The populist zeitgeist’, Government and opposition, 39(4), pp. 541–

563.

Primicias (2021) Ecuador del Encuentro, la estrategia que llevó a Lasso a la

Presidencia. Available at: https://www.primicias.ec/noticias/politica/ecuador-encuentro-

estrategia-remonto-votacion-lasso/.

Roberts, K. M. (1995) ‘Neoliberalism and the transformation of populism in Latin

American: The peruvian case’, World Politics, 48(1), pp. 82–116.

Seargeant, P. (2020) The Art of Political Storytelling: Why Stories Win Votes in Post-

truth Politics. Bloomsbury.

Solomon, M. (2017) Consumer Behavior: Buying, Having, and Being. Pearson

Education Limited.

Sood, A. (2017) The elusive art of Political Branding. Available at:

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/elusive-art-political-branding-aakarsh-sood.

Ungureanu, C. and Serrano, I. (2018) ‘Populism as a narrative and the crisis of

representative democracy’, Revista CIDOB d’Afers Internacionals, (119), pp. 13–34.

doi: 10.24241/rcai.2018.119.2.13.

Weyland, K. (2001) ‘Clarifying a Contested Concept: Populism in the study of Latin

American Politics’, Comparative Politics, 34(1), pp. 1–22.

Annex
Annex N.° 1: Results of the first round, February 2021

Source: Consejo Nacional Electoral, 2021