A Critique of the Lees-Marshment Market-Oriented Party Model
| Published date | 01 May 2006 |
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1467-9256.2006.00257.x |
| Date | 01 May 2006 |
| Author | Robert P. Ormrod |
| Subject Matter | Debate |
Debate
A Critique of the Lees-Marshment
Market-Oriented Party Model
Robert P. Ormrod
Institute for Marketing and Statistics, Aarhus School of Business
This article presents conceptual and empirical criticisms of the Lees-Marshment market-oriented
party model. Conceptual criticisms are the short-term approach, the narrow focus on voters, the
nature of the relationship to competitors, a tendency towards centralisation and the lack of a dis-
tinction between the related concepts of ‘market orientation’ and ‘marketing orientation’. Empiri-
cal studies demonstrate problems with the model when applied to certain party types and electoral
systems, the limitations on implementation of the model due to ideology and scarce resources, the
partial application of the model in practice, and the constraints on the market-oriented party when
in government.
Introduction
One of the most important concepts in commercial marketing, market orientation,
has only recently been applied to political parties (e.g. Lees-Marshment, 2001a
and 2001b; O’Cass, 1996, 2001a and 2001b; Ormrod, 2004 and 2005), and by far
the largest amount of empirical work has examined Lees-Marshment’s (2001a
and 2001b) market-oriented party model. This article will first describe Lees-
Marshment’s (2001a and 2001b) market-oriented party model and then provide
conceptual criticisms from the commercial market orientation literature and criti-
cisms based on the results of empirical studies carried out in various countries
around the world.
The market-oriented party model
Jennifer Lees-Marshment (2001a and 2001b) proposes three basic types of politi-
cal party, the product-, sales- and market-oriented party. A product-oriented party
develops its policies internally and then argues their merits to the voting public.
The policies define the party; they will remain the same irrespective of whether
they enable the party to gain political influence. The sales-oriented party uses com-
munication techniques from the business world to sell its policies to voters, realis-
ing this is necessary as not all of the electorate will automatically vote for it. The
sales-oriented party is similar to the product-oriented party as policy is still devel-
oped internally, but differs in that market intelligence is used to design the sales
strategy. Finally, Lees-Marshment’s (2001a and 2001b) market-oriented party first
generates information on voter preferences and then ‘designs a product that will
actually satisfy voters’ demands: that meets their needs and wants, is supported
and implemented by the internal organisation, and is deliverable in government’
© 2006 The Author. Journal compilation © 2006 Political Studies Association
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Table 1: The marketing process for the market-oriented party
(adapted from Lees-Marshment, 2001a, p. 31)
Stage
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
Activity
Market
Product
Product
Implementation
Communication
Campaign
Election
Delivery
intelligence
design
adjustment
(Lees-Marshment, 2001a, p. 30). Furthermore, the market-oriented party ‘does not
attempt to change what people think, but to deliver what they need and want’
(Lees-Marshment, 2001a, p. 30). It is Lees-Marshment’s (2001a and 2001b)
market-oriented party type that is the focus of her work, and also of this
article.
Lees-Marshment’s (2001a, p. 31) model (Table 1) charts the process the market-
oriented party passes through during the electoral cycle. The first stage, market intel-
ligence, refers to the activities carried out by party professionals and volunteer
members that generate information from formal (analysis of opinion polls,
questionnaires, focus groups) and informal (social interaction with individual’s
network) sources. Volunteer party members are important, as stages two and three,
product design and product adjustment, describe the process that the results of the
market intelligence stage must go through to gain the acceptance of the party faith-
ful. As many volunteer members as possible should be included in the formula-
tion of policies, as this will ‘increase co-operation and understanding between them
and help to reduce the chances of an “outsider/insider” (professional/party
member) distinction arising’ (Lees-Marshment, 2001a, p. 33).
Stages four and five, the implementation and communication of party policy out to
the electorate is carried out continuously, and if successful, stage six, the campaign,
‘is then almost superfluous to requirements but provides the last chance to convey
to voters what is on offer. If the party is the most market-oriented of its main com-
petitors, it then wins the election’ (Lees-Marshment, 2001a, p. 211). Finally, if the
party wins the election in stage seven, it must then deliver on its election pledges
in stage eight, delivery, which ‘is crucial to the ultimate success of marketing and
therefore political marketing’ (Lees-Marshment, 2001a, p. 40).
Conceptual critique
The concept of ‘market orientation’ in the commercial marketing literature was
first introduced more than 40 years ago by Theodore Levitt (1960), who argued
that more attention should be paid to the markets that the business served instead
of concentrating on the product that the business made.1 Interest in the concept
grew in the 1990s after the publication of two articles (Kohli and Jaworski, 1990;
Narver and Slater, 1990) to the extent that Barbara A. Lafferty and G. Tomas Hult
(2001) could identify five distinct approaches to how a market orientation was
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understood and then synthesised these into four common dimensions, an empha-
sis on customers, the importance of information, an interfunctional co-ordination and a
responsiveness by taking action.
All of Lafferty and Hult’s (2001) four dimensions of commercial market
orientation are present in Lees-Marshment’s (2001a and 2001b) work. The first
dimension, an emphasis on the customer, is a...
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