A political marketing expert says familiarity, works and comfortability with the National Democratic Congress (NDC)'s James Gyakye Quayson are factors that granted him victory in the just-ended Assin North Constituency by-election.

Professor Kobby Mensah explained that it is not easy for constituents to suddenly change their representatives.

He stated that especially when that person had earlier won the seat with massive votes and had performed quite to the satisfaction of the people.

In such a situation, the new challenger must prove to the constituents why they need to choose him instead of the incumbent.

According to him, the New Patriotic Party's (NPP), Charles Opoku's status as a philanthropist and the claim that he hails from the same place as the NDC's candidate are not enough to garner support or votes.

He needed to bring "every compelling reason" for which he should be elected, Prof. Kobby added.

"When you had gone to buy a waakye from seller A and you found the waakye tasty, now seller B comes you don't know seller B. Are you going to change your waakye seller from seller A to seller B or you're going to maintain the same seller?

"In marketing, we say that repurchase can only happen if the company had delivered. Now, if there's a new competitor, that new competitor must clog perhaps the gap in the first one and must bring every compelling reason why you should change your purchase or seller.

"Now the question is we have seen so many constituencies hooting at their MPs. We haven't seen that from Assin North. In fact, not that I've seen. And now the NDC is presenting the same candidate and you're actually bringing another candidate, a new candidate which you claim comes from the same place and is a philanthropist.

"So for people to be able to shift their purchase behaviour from someone who's a politician and they're somehow satisfied with, to a philanthropist they don't know, I think that the old adage 'the devil you know is better than the angel you don't know' actually applied here," he explained on JoyFm's Super Morning Show on Thursday.

Ahead of the by-election, many researchers predicted that the NPP's Charles Opoku will win according to their findings but reality denied the predictions. The NDC's James Gyakye Quayson won by a convincing margin to recapture the seat.

Prof Kobby Mensah emphasized that demographics alone do not win elections but delivery of work does. He expressed that being a philanthropist is not the same as being a politician in that the "skill sets" are completely different.

Meanwhile, another factor which contributed to the defeat of Charles Opoku according to the expert is that the entire country does not believe that the current NPP-led government has performed well.

According to him, the people of the Assin North constituency realized that they were being taken for granted.