Lecture 2 – Political marketing?
Lees-Marshment (2001)
Abstract
Marriage between political science and marketing. It borrows the core marketing concepts
of product, sales and market-orientation, and techniques such as market intelligence, and
adapts them to suit traditional tenets of political science to produce an integrated
theoretical framework. A party that takes a product-orientation argues for what it stands for
and believes in. A Sales-Orientated party focuses on selling its argument and product to
voters. A Market-Orientated party designs its behaviour to provide voter satisfaction.
Exploring these three orientations demonstrates that political marketing can be applied to a
wide range of behaviour and suggests its potential to be applied to several areas of political
studies.
Introduction
- Political marketing is about political organizations adapting business-marketing
concepts and techniques to help them achieve their goals
- ‘Something old’ explores the foundations that traditional tenets of political science
provide for the partnership.
- ‘Something borrowed’ explains what we take from marketing.
- ‘Something new’ presents the results of the marriage, outlining the theoretical
framework of product, sales and market-oriented parties.
- ‘Something blue’ illustrates the theory by exploring how the Conservative Party used
political marketing.
In Defence of Political Science: Time for a New Lesson on Political Marketing
- On PMC (political marketing communication)
Something Old: Lessons from Political Studies
When applying marketing to major British political parties, traditional political science
literature helps us understand their nature, product, goals, market and behaviour.
Market
- Complex. It consists of the voters whose sup- port a party requires to achieve
electoral success, which superficially means those eligible to vote in a general
election, limited to the section of it required to win office after taking into account
electoral rules, boundaries and seat distribution.
- Members may have different and conflicting demands and parties have to try to
reconcile these differences. The membership may, however, be representative of
the electorate and also want electoral success, so it can help a party achieve its goal.
Product
- The party’s ‘product’ is its behaviour that encompasses many characteristics, is
ongoing and offered at all times (not just elections), at all levels of the party.
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,Approach to behaviour
- Political marketing builds on these models, particularly the Downsian rational-choice
basis, but integrates different directions from marketing and provides a fuller picture
of party behaviour by incorporating different sub-fields of the political science
family, existing models do not fully capture. Political marketing can help to address
this by borrowing certain aspects from marketing.
Something Borrowed: the Different School of Marketing
- Marketing literature discusses how businesses try to gain more custom, design their
product and promote it.
- Political marketing is therefore as broad and concerned with more than just
communication. This takes direction from marketing but is also congruent with
political science because political parties have been studied in terms of their
organizational structure, leadership, policy, electoral support, not just campaign
efforts.
- Marketing offers several orientations to explain business behaviour: product, sales
and market-orientations.
o A Product-Oriented business
o A Sales-Oriented business
o A Market-Oriented business
- These three orientations can be applied to party behaviour.
- Marketing also uses a process to depict activities,
o ‘marketing mix’ or ‘4Ps’: product, pricing, promotion and place. This can be
formed into a chronological process consisting of various stages a party will
go through within one electoral cycle.
o the 4Ps ‘need considerable stretching to make much sense in politics.’
- From marketing therefore, we receive three new orientations, and a marketing
process, which adapted to suit politics produce a theoretical framework to develop
our understanding of political behaviour.
Something New: the Different Curriculum of Political Marketing
- Political parties can use political marketing to increase their chances of achieving
their goal of winning general elections.
- They can do this by being product, sales or market-oriented.
- Each orientation is a useful tool for studying organizational behaviour.
o A Product-Oriented party argues for what it stands for and believes in. It
assumes that voters will realize that its ideas are the right ones and therefore
vote for it. This type of party refuses to change its ideas or product even if it
fails to gain electoral or membership support.
o A Sales-Orientated party focuses on selling its argument to voters. It retains
its pre-determined product design, but recognizes that desired supporters
may not automatically want it. Using market intelligence to understand
voters’ response to its behaviour, the party employs the latest advertising
and communication techniques to persuade voters that it is right. A Sales-
Oriented party does not change its behaviour to suit what people want, but
tries to make people want what it offers.
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, o A Market-Oriented party designs its behaviour to provide voter satisfaction.
It uses market intelligence to identify voter demands, then designs its
product to suit them. It does not attempt to change what people think, but to
deliver what they need and want. it needs to ensure that it can deliver the
product on offer. If it fails to deliver, voters will become dissatisfied. It also
needs to ensure that it will be accepted within the party and so needs to
adjust its product carefully to take account of this. A Market-Oriented party
therefore designs a product that will actually satisfy voters’ demands: that
meets their needs and wants, is supported and implemented by the internal
organization, and is deliverable in government.
- To achieve these orientations, political parties engage in various activities, going
through a marketing process.
- This representation of the marketing process differs significantly from marketing
itself and also from previous studies of political marketing which do not always
change marketing as extensively.
- Certain aspects of marketing language are nevertheless retained.
- It is important to note what is ‘missing’ from the process for the first two
orientations: there are certain stages that only a market-oriented party would go
through. There are also important differences in the order.
- The idea that political parties should design their product to suit voters, rather than
argue their case, works against traditional views of politics. Alternatively it could be
argued that it shows parties are becoming more responsive to people, which is good
for democracy.
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