The Marriage of Politics and Marketing
| Published date | 01 September 2001 |
| Date | 01 September 2001 |
| DOI | 10.1111/1467-9248.00337 |
| Author | Jennifer Lees-Marshment |
| Subject Matter | Article |
The Marriage of Politics and Marketing
Jennifer Lees-Marshment
University of Aberdeen
Research into major party behaviour in Britain from a political marketing perspective finds that
political marketing is broad in scope and offers fresh analytical tools to explain how political organ-
izations behave. It is nevertheless a 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.
Political marketing is about political organizations adapting business-marketing
concepts and techniques to help them achieve their goals. Political parties, interest
groups and local councils are amongst those entities that increasingly conduct market
intelligence to identify citizen concerns, change their behaviour to meet those
demands and communicate their ‘product offering’ more effectively. Political
marketing has hitherto suffered from significant confusion (see Scammell, 1999)
because it is commonly perceived to be simply about political communication, but
it is a potentially fruitful marriage between political studies and marketing. Results
from research into political marketing and British political parties, set in the
context of how this marriage between politics and marketing came about, demon-
strate the broader scope of the field. ‘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
As indicated by Scammell’s (1999) review of existing literature, the broad scope
of political marketing has not been widely accepted. Political marketing has been
accused of being nothing other than presentational fizz and dismissed as a cute idea
offering little more than trendy appeal. Marrying marketing to politics seems to
have caused a scandal: not everyone in political science is happy with the cross-
disciplinary match.1In defence of political science, the lesson has not been that
well taught. Firstly, the majority of political marketers2focus on PMC (political
marketing communication) and even where such authors assert the wider potential
of political marketing,3this is not always sufficiently well demonstrated. Secondly,
POLITICAL STUDIES: 2001 VOL 49, 692–713
© Political Studies Association, 2001.
Published by Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA
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the power of the lesson is reduced because discussion about the influence of
marketing on the design of political behaviour is mixed with analysis of its pre-
sentation. Thirdly, as noted by Butler and Collins (1996, p. 32), research neglects
comprehensive utilization of marketing theory. Covering empirical changes is
important, but it is imperative we supply theoretical frameworks to inform such
analysis so we know what to look for and what to question.
Something Old: Lessons from Political Studies
Before we can do so, however, it is important to note what we take from each
discipline to create political marketing. Political marketing is a marriage between
two disciplines, containing something from marketing and something from politics.
Empirically, it represents the permeation of the political arena by marketing: it
needs to take direction from the leading partner of marketing, but be applied with
care to its recipient partner of politics. Marketing literature itself acknowledges
that non-profit-organizations are substantially different to businesses (see O’Leary
and Iredale, 1976, p. 153; Evans and Berman, 1994, p. 399). For a political party
in particular, its goal is different and its performance is more difficult to measure.
It may have several, possibly conflicting markets, which are generally undefined
and unknown. It is not a profit-making enterprise and is conventionally seen as
having normative roles or functions to play in society. A party’s ‘product’ is less
tangible and is more complex to design, as well as envisage conceptually. Transfer-
ring marketing principles from business organizations to non-profit organizations
is a complex process (see Rothschild, 1979, p. 11) and as Scrivens and Witzel (1990,
p. 13) notes ‘marketing approaches must be adapted’. When applying marketing to
major British political parties, traditional political science literature helps us under-
stand their nature, product, goals, market and behaviour.
Nature of the Organization
Major political parties in Britain seek to compete in democratic elections in order
to hold public office. They may have many goals and although it is a matter for
debate, it is generally accepted that electoral success is dominant.4Major parties
aim to win enough votes in general elections to win control of government. They
aim to do this in successive general elections because they hold a long-term
perspective.
Market
The market for parties is somewhat 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.
More widely, the party would consider any other part of the population with
influence upon this electorate. Voters may also be influenced by the demands of
non-voters, such as their children. Party members, who may or may not be voters,
are also important: in their study of the British Conservative and Labour Party
memberships, Seyd and Whiteley (1992) and Whiteley et al. (1994) argue that loyal
and active members generate votes. Members may have different and conflicting
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