Investigating the Co-creation Process of Political brands from a Multi-Stakeholder Orientation

Co-creation can be defined as the ‘joint creation of value by the company and the customer’ (Prahalad and Ramaswamy, 2004, p.8). It also encompasses the notion of allowing the customer to co-construct the service experience to suit her personal context. The concept of value co-creation had become firmly established in the marketing literature (Ramaswamy and Ozcan 2014; Galvagna and Dalli 2014) and is a fundamental construct within Service Dominant Logic (Vargo and Lush, 2008). Value co –creation typically explains the move from regarding organisations as a definer of value to a process whereby people and organisations jointly develop meaning and outcomes (Alves et al, 2016). According to Vargo and Lusch (2017, p.47) value co-creation is coordinated through actor-generated institutions with the ‘service ecosystem’ as the ‘unit of analysis.’ Although initially focused on a dyadic exchange, and typically between that of a supplier and a receiver, value co-creation could also be perceived as ‘economic and social actors within networks interacting and exchanging across and through networks’ (Vargo and Lusch, 2008, p.5). Ramaswarmy and Ozcanb (2018, p.196) have recently developed this idea further by suggesting that co-creation is a representation of ‘interactional creation across interactive system-environments’ which may be assisted by platforms. However, are there limits to the application of value co-creation to different settings and contexts and can this ‘service ecosystem’ support our understanding of institutions and networks beyond the commercial marketing domain? Could value co-creation provide deep understanding on the interactional creation, development and management of ‘service eco-systems’ from non-traditional areas of marketing?

The exploration of political brands has become a ‘critical’ and ‘priority’ issue that warrants continued attention (Pich et al. 2018; Speed et al. 2015). Further, deconstructing political brands has been described as the most appropriate way to understand the political ‘product’ and a mechanism to frame the deconstruction process to understand the political promise put forward by political actors (Scammell 2015). Political brands are complex, multi-layered entities which are often difficult to unbundle (Lees-Marshment 2009; Lock and Harris 1996; Phipps et al. 2010). Political brands are co-created by multiple stakeholders including both internal and external to the organisation with the aid of tangible and intangible elements (Milewicz and Milewicz 2014). Political brands need to provide a clear understandable message in order to be considered authentic and credible (Gurau and Ayadi 2011; Smith and Saunders 1990). Existing researchers in this area accept that brands are partly created in the mind of the consumer (or citizen) and deconstructed and understood through in-depth data collection tools. In contrast, political brands can be measured or reviewed by analysing discourse through the practice of content analysis (Milewicz and Milewicz 2014; Needham and Smith 2015). However, political brands are also created, developed and communicated by internal stakeholders within the political organisation (Pich et al. 2014). Therefore, existing research on political brands has tended to focus on a solely external perspective or exclusively on an internal perspective (French and Smith 2010; Peng and Hackley 2009; Phipps et al. 2010; Pich and Dean 2015; Pich et al. 2016) with little attention on internal and external perspectives from (party and voters).

Subsequently, future research should explore the value co-creation process of political brands from a multi-stakeholder perspective as this will enhance our understanding and contribute to the development of political branding theory (Needham and Smith 2015; Ormrod 2011; Scammell 2015). Political branding has the opportunity to look beyond the world of political marketing for assistance in knowledge development and fuse insights from different research areas (Baines and Harris 2011; Needham and Smith 2015; Ramaswarmy and Ozcanb 2018; Vargo and Lusch 2014; Vargo and Lusch 2008). This insight will provide political actors with mechanisms and tools to deconstruct and operationalise their political brands from a multi stakeholder perspective.