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The Context, Content andProcess of Political MarketingStrategyPaul Baines a & Richard Lynch aa Middlesex University Business School , London, UKPublished online: 08 Oct 2008.
To cite this article: Paul Baines & Richard Lynch (2005) The Context, Content andProcess of Political Marketing Strategy, Journal of Political Marketing, 4:2-3, 1-18,DOI: 10.1300/J199v04n02_01
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GUEST EDITORIAL
The Context, Content and Processof Political Marketing Strategy
Paul BainesRichard Lynch
Middlesex University Business School, London, UK
Over the last thirty years or so, the concept of marketing strategy hasbecome widely accepted within the management literature (see, for ex-ample, Kotler, 2000; Aaker, 2001; Baker, 2001). In essence, marketingstrategy represents a broad general set of principles–or, in Kotler’swords, a ‘game plan’–that will achieve the marketing objectives of theorganisation. Marketing strategy is likely to have some special charac-teristics: it may involve the creation of a unique and valuable position ina market place (Porter, 1996; Hooley and Saunders, 1999; Doyle, 2001;Cool, Costa and Dierickx, 2002). A company that has a good marketingstrategy is likely to perform differently from rivals in the market placeor, if the same, then to perform in different ways (Porter, 1996). It maywell involve seizing a new window of opportunity through new technol-ogy, new market segments, market redefinition, new legislation andnew marketing channels (Doyle, 2001). The purpose of this special edi-tion of the Journal of Political Marketing is to examine the applicationof such principles to political marketing. This is undertaken by the ex-ploration and application of some basic strategic principles in this intro-duction and by the contributing papers of our distinguished panel ofacademics and practitioners in the pages that follow.
Journal of Political Marketing, Vol. 4(2/3) 2005Available online at http://www.haworthpress.com/web/JPOLM
2005 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved.doi:10.1300/J199v04n02_01 1
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From the perspective of political campaigning, the marketing analogy isnow widely accepted with its underpinning logic of ‘companies-as-parties,voters-as-customers’ (Denton, 1988; Reid, 1988; O’Shaughnessy, 1990;Niffenegger, 1989). This has allowed general definitions of marketingstrategy to be applied to political marketing. Thus, for example, elec-tions involve the use of marketing research to identify voter segments.Candidate and party positioning are then undertaken within the electionmarket place (Baines, 1999) and message development leads to variousforms of media campaigning (Varoga and Rice, 1999). We are certainthat the papers published in this special edition bring new and valuableinsights to this approach to political marketing strategy. However, theargument in this editorial is that the ‘companies-as-parties, voters-as-customers’ approach underplays some important facets of political mar-keting strategy. We are not indicating that the analogy is wrong; simplythat it is only one perspective that may miss useful insights into the de-velopment of political marketing strategy. The purpose of this editorial–at least in this opening part–is to outline an alternative insight intostrategy–that of context, content and process–and explore its implica-tions for the development of political marketing strategy.
In order to explain context, content, and process in political market-ing strategy, it useful to begin by going back to the very nature of busi-ness strategy itself. A widely accepted definition of business strategycan be adapted to define political marketing strategy: ‘the identificationof the purpose of a political party and the actions to achieve that pur-pose’ (adapted from Andrews, 1987). Within this definition, it is com-monly acknowledged amongst business strategists that it is useful tomake a distinction between three main, interconnected dimensions:context, content, and process (Pettigrew and Whipp, 1991; Pettigrew etal., 2002). By contrast with business strategy, we observe that the typi-cal marketing strategy definitions outlined above rarely make such adistinction, which we believe to be particularly important in developingpolitical marketing strategy. In many cases, they focus mainly on thecontents of the marketing plan (see, for example, Doyle, 1998 andBaker, 2001) rather than the context and process of marketing strategydevelopment. To explore the implications of this, we begin by definingcontext, content, and process:
• Context–defined as the circumstances surrounding the strategicdecision, both defining and confining the way that strategic deci-sion-making develops (Lynch, 2003). The political marketing con-text is special because it is substantively different in every country
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in the world (Baines, Scheucher and Plasser, 2001). It is boundedby laws, restrictions, and specialist (in the sense of independent orheavily controlled) media coverage in particular as well as by dif-fering degrees of political competition (i.e., the numbers of politi-cal parties, types of alliances constituting oligopolies, monopolies,and poligolies in the vast majority of cases (Baines, Brennan andEgan, 2001). Arguably, this complex context applies to few otherproducts or services. Perhaps, the closest parallel is with financialservices, where international restrictions abound. Why are theresuch variations in political marketing contexts, one might ask? Be-cause political marketing products and services have considerableimpact upon society and affect people’s lives and futures.
• Content–defined as the chosen strategy and the specific actionsthat follow in order to implement the plan (Lynch, 2003). Politicalmarketing content is probably similar to that developed in servicesmarkets (Newman, 1987; Baines, Brennan and Egan, 2001). Itcommonly involves the identification of the target electorate andthe development of specific campaigns to persuade voters to fa-vour a particular political party or group. We make no claim thatthis aspect of political marketing is special although there are ele-ments of it, e.g., negative campaigning, which are not allowed inthe standard commercial campaign.
• Process–defined as the way that strategy is developed over timeand the related decision-making managerial processes that interactwith content and context (Quinn, 1981; Lynch, 2003). Arguably,political marketing strategy has similarities with product relaunchcampaigns. However, the actual election requires a greater degreeof flexibility than the traditional product relaunch described inmarketing theory because of the nature of condensed time elementof the election ‘battle’(see Butler and Collins, 1999). This is quitedifferent to many, if not all, other marketing strategy areas andsupports our argument that political marketing strategy is special.
In strategic theory, the three above elements are only facets of thesame strategy and act together at the same time (Pettigrew and Whipp,1991). Nevertheless, each of the above areas is commonly identifiedand explored separately in order to draw out its individual insights.Each of the above three areas is therefore, separately explored in greaterdepth in the sections that follow. This editorial concludes by showinghow each of the chosen papers in this special edition explores elementsof these three dimensions.
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THE STRATEGIC CONTEXT OF POLITICAL MARKETINGSTRATEGY
Many new and existing products and services are constrained by le-gal and political frameworks both within countries and across coun-tries as a result of the role of governments and international treatiesdeveloped over time. Typically, the strategic context is analysed usingsuch frameworks as PESTEL analysis (Kotler, 2000; Lynch, 2003).However, we believe that such contextual analytical tools are insuffi-cient for the development of political marketing strategy and need to besupplemented with other concepts and models.
The conduct of political parties, the election systems that are em-ployed and the intervening periods of political decision-making arebounded by national systems of laws, rules, and procedures (Scammell,1997; Baines, Sheucher and Plasser, 2001). Such formal and informalrules and procedures then guide and channel marketing activities asso-ciated with political activity (Newman, 1999). In turn, these govern theanalysis and development of political marketing. Ergo, they are essen-tial to the development of political marketing strategy.
But how do we develop and structure our environmental analysis toprovide sufficiently detailed political marketing strategy insights? Auseful starting point is the consideration of the background history anddevelopment of politics in the country concerned (Baines, Lewis andHarris, 2002; Burton and Shea, 2002). We take a broad view of ‘poli-tics’ here in the sense that some countries may not have a democraticgovernment, but they are likely to still have political activities that willinvolve some forms of marketing strategy and activities. Within thisgeneral framework–which we have called the background of the strat-egy context–there will be a clear system of beliefs and laws that governhow political activities are conducted. Such a background derives fromthe history, culture and governance of the country and is the broad gen-eral context within which all politics is conducted. This is important be-cause it will influence the way that political marketing is undertaken.
Within this broad framework, each country then has a set of eco-nomic and political principles that determine the way that economicgrowth, wealth generation, and its distribution are developed–in es-sence, the distinction and the balance between capitalist and socialistapproaches to national political development (Koopman and Montias,1971). Political marketing strategists need to analyse and work withinsuch a framework, which we have called the system of the strategy con-
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text. This contextual system underpins and directs the role of politicalmarketing around the world.
Within such a system, there will then be specific laws, rules, conven-tions, and procedural and legal organisations that will constrain and en-force the conduct of political marketing activities.We include withinthis the ‘third estate’ of the media, incorporating press, radio and televi-sion, and other means of communicating with the electorate. We labelthis the framework of the strategy context. This contextual framework isfundamental to the activities of political marketing. The three areas–background, system, and framework–move from the general to the spe-cific and can therefore be considered as sequential. They are combinedand summarised in Figure 1.
To illustrate the concept of the background, system, framework para-digm and its impact on political marketing strategy further, we have ap-plied the B-S-F framework for the UK, USA, France, Turkey, andMexico. See Figure 2.
One clear implication of Figures 2a and b is the difficulty of drawingout international lessons on strategy: strategic context makes electionstrategy special, possibly even unique, to each individual country. Whatis clear from the above figures is that the context of each individualcountry has an impact on both the process and content of politicalmarketing.
THE STRATEGIC CONTENT OF POLITICAL MARKETINGSTRATEGY
To some extent, the strategic content of political marketing strategydepends on both context and process, as outlined in further detail beforeand after this section. Some components of strategic content are never-theless basic to most elections to differing degrees. Most political par-ties and candidates must segment their voters, they simply do not havesufficient resources to aim their message at the whole voter franchise.Nevertheless, although most countries have adopted universal suffrageat 18 years of age, not all have. For example, South Korea’s age of vot-ing consent is 20 years old and some countries in the Middle East haveno system of democratic voting. As rates of voting tend to differ by age,gender and occupational group in Britain (see Worcester and Mortimore,1999) and in Sweden and the US (see Granberg and Holmberg, 1995), wepostulate that the political context affects strategic content in elections,fundamentally changing the message that is aimed at motivating these
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groups to vote. We provide further evidence for this in the papers con-tained within this special edition.
The way in which messages are relayed to the publics of differentcountries (see Figures 2a & b) differs and so, therefore, does the con-tent of those messages. Thus, political issues pertaining to Turkey’sgovernment relate to the Kurdish question (i.e., should Turkey give upland to allow Kurds to form their own country?), accession to the Eu-ropean Union, and economic stability and recovery. Issues pertainingto the current British government include European integration andadoption of the European currency, security, transport and infrastruc-ture, and health provision. Issues pertaining to the French governmentrelate to Franco-German relations and increasing EU integration, secu-rity, and immigration.
In each case, the different political parties and candidates vying foroffice will have their own solutions to each of the problems and maywell not agree on what these problems are. These solutions, or politicalproducts/services, are marketed with differing degrees of effectiveness
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Strategic context using the B-S-F Paradigm
Components Outcomes
Culture and historyHistoric leadershipRole of democracyand electionsRelationship withnational defenseforces–army, etc.
History of electionsRoles and rights ofpolitical partiesVoting franchise, e.g.,women, minorities
Capitalist:laissez-faireSocialist: dirigisteMixed
Nature and frequency ofelectionsFreedom of choiceAttitudes to internationalissuesDegree of politicalcompetition
Legal frameworkNumber andgeographical spreadof constituenciesControl and influenceof media
Purpose of electionsControls exertedRole of local versusnational activitiesElectoral regulations andconventions
Background (B):
History and momentum inpolitical marketing strategies
System (S):
The country’s systemof government
Framework (F):
The main electoral, legal,and media framework
FIGURE 1. Developing the Political Marketing Strategy Context
Source: Adapted from Koopman and Montias (1971)
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Guest Editorial 7
FIGURE 2a. BSF Paradigm Applied to US and UK Political Contexts
CountryParadigm:
Background→ System → Framework
Marketingstrategyimplications
USA * Constitution-basedfederal republic withstrong democratictradition* Balance of powerbetween President,Congress andSupreme Court
* Capitalist* 2-party first-past-the-post electoralsystem every 4years; presidentialcandidateselected by collegeof staterepresentatives torun in generalelection, winnerformsgovernment* Universalsuffrage: 18 yearsof age* Strong tradition oflobbying byspecial interestgroups, particularlysincedevelopment ofpolitical actioncommittees in1970s
* Strict lawsgoverningelectoral funds,content and timing* Paid mediaextremelyimportant inrelayingmessage, butexpensive* Highlyfragmented mediaoffers many waysof reachingelectorate* Comparativelylow electoralparticipation inelections
* Strategiesgoverned byseries of strictlaws, particularlyon campaignfinance* Important tounderstand andinfluence lobbygroups* Election fundingto pay for TVadvertisingfundamental andoften critical tosuccess*Get-out-the-voteactivities important* Two partysysterm createsstrategicinterdependenceand personality-based politics
UK * Constitutionalmonarchy withinEuropean Union* Balance of powerbetweenParliament and PrimeMinster’s Office
* Capitalist* Three-partyfirst-past-the-postsystem up to every5 years on decisionof Prime Minister,party leaderelected byconvention andwinner of generalelection formsgovernment* Universalsuffrage: 18 yearsof age* Developingtradition oflobbying by specialinterest groups
* Strict laws onelection fundingand broadcastcommunications* Nationalisedmedia important inrelaying message(earned media)* Comparativelyhigh electoralparticipation inelections untilrecently
* Timing ofelections crucial tosuccess* Developingpublic relationsfunction a criticalsuccess factor,particularly withpress media* Three-partysystem createsneed for productdifferentiation
Sources: http://www.cia.gov/worldfactbook; http://www.politics.ubc.ca/tiberg/YT-FR%20elections%20Present.htm
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FIGURE 2b. BSF Paradigm Applied to French, Turkish and Mexican PoliticalContexts
CountryParadigm:BackgroundFramework → → System
Marketing strategyimplications
→
France * RepublicwithinEuropeanUnion* Balance ofpower betweenSenate,NationalAssembly andPresidency
* Socialist* Six-party singlemember majoritariansystem every 5years; presidentelected in a separatetwo-ballot system bypopular vote* University suffrage:18 years of age* Strong tradition oflobbying by specialinterest groups
* Strict regulationson publishing ofopinion polls, fundingand broadcastcommunication*Earned mediaimportant in relayingmessage toelectorate* Comparatively highlevel of participationin elections althoughit has declined recently
* Left-right split ofcoalitions requirescareful marketpositioning* Power of presidentprecipitatespersonalised politics* Ban on pollsarguably encourageseither moresubstantive policyclaims or less stylisticpersonality attacks
Turkey * Republicanparliamentarydemocracy* Balance ofpowerbetweengovernmentand NationalSecurityCouncil
* Socialist* Proportionalelectoral systemevery five years;president elected bynational assembly for7 yr. term* Universal suffrage:18 years of age* Turkey has appliedfor membership ofthe European Union
* Very high electoralparticipation inelections* Volatile rate ofdevelopment ofpolitical parties andfeverish alliancesbetween them* Broadcastcommunicationimportant indelivering message
* Left-right alliancesand volatility ofparties requiredelicate marketpositioning*Power of the Na-tional SecurityCouncil ensuresrelatively secularpolitical policies* Political partiesconcentrate ondevelopment ofcountry infrastructure(e.g., IMF payments,EU accession)
Mexico * FederalRepublic withweakdemocratictradition* Balance ofpowerremains withPresidentalthoughincreasingpower movingto congress
* Socialist* President electedby popular voteusing proportionalsystem for 6 yr. term* Bicameralassembly* Universal suffrage(compulsory but notenforced): 18 yearsof age
* Corruption rife withbribery and treatingcommon prior to 2000presidential election* Single party systemfor 71 years prior to2000 PresidentialElection* Increasing use ofbroadcast and massmedia in electioneering* Increasing use ofpolling to surveyelectorate
* Decreasing barriersto entry for newpolitical parties* Power of presidentensures focus onpersonalised politics* Political partiesfocussed ondevelopment ofcountry infrastructure(e.g., IMF payments,tackling corruptionand related crime)
Sources: http://www.turkishembassy.org/governmentpolitics/politicsparties.htm; www.cia.gov/worldfeedbackbook; http://www.politics.ubc.ca/tiberg/YTFR%20elections%20Present.htm, http://www.utexas.edu/cola/llilas/centers/mexican/publications/entire.htm
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in the form of promises and messages at election time. We can see thatsince the content of politics differs in each country, and because eachparty will treat issues slightly differently, so it is difficult to make gener-alisations (and therefore prescriptions) about the nature of strategiccontent in political marketing strategy.
THE STRATEGIC PROCESS OF POLITICAL MARKETINGSTRATEGY
According to most existing marketing strategy approaches, a se-quence of analysis, options, choice, and implementation is regarded asappropriate. Such a process comes from the traditional marketing strat-egy doctrines associated with developing marketing plans (Ansoff,1965; Day, 1987; Kotler, 2000). These authors emphasise the impor-tance of customers, competitors, and market segmentation and position-ing. The approach has been called the prescriptive marketing strategyprocess.
In political marketing strategy development, the prescriptive processis clearly a useful basic structure for strategy development. This kind ofprocess has been outlined and employed by numerous authors (see, forexample, Newman, 1994; Maarek, 1995). However, the prescriptiveprocess of strategy development does not lend itself well to environ-ments that are fast-changing and where strategic decisions are made andchanged within short time frames (Mintzberg, 1994; Courtney et al.,1997). In addition, such an approach does not readily lend itself to themore creative aspects of strategy development that may occur during anelection campaign (Farrell, 1996; Ross, 1999). This kind of dynamicenvironment requires a dynamic process of strategy development. Suchan approach is typically referred to as the emergent approach to strategydevelopment (Mintzberg, 1990; Ansoff, 1991; Lengnick-Hall andWoolf, 1999; Lynch, 2003).
In addition, the political process per se is quite different from that ofother products and services, for many of the reasons outlined previouslyin this editorial. The political service/product is ephemeral and amor-phous in nature and dynamic in content. Whilst this allows the main ele-ments of the content to change in the period of the election campaignand, although in practice, this is often what happens, voters tend to dis-trust politicians’ promises as a result. Such distrust results in a catch-22situation: if politicians change their messages to suit the public, then thepublic mistrust them, if they do not change the policies when they fail to
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get them right, voters dislike them. Thus, politicians try to change theirmessages surreptitiously and alter the emphasis of their messages or de-velop new messages depending on the reaction of potential voters in theperiod up to the final vote. Such a process is reinforced in modernelections by:
• regular polling of opinions;• strong (and opinionated) media attention;• ‘events’ outside the control of the political party.
It follows that the prescriptive approach is simply insufficient in anera of strong and aggressive media campaigning in the last few weeks ofa national election campaign, rapid communications, fragility of imagebuilding, and active units in political parties prepared to rebut claims,and unanticipated events. This latter element makes prescriptive strat-egy development particularly difficult. Thus, an emergent strategy pro-cess becomes an essential additional component of political marketingstrategy.
But what precisely is an emergent strategy process? There is no sin-gle agreed definition so we have chosen for its relevance to politicalmarketing to adopt the Learning-based process of Argyris, Senge andothers (Senge, 1990; Argyris, 1991; Egan, 1995). The reason for thischoice is that this approach is based on the development of strong feed-back mechanisms based on market testing, which is what takes place inelection campaigning when parties effectively market test policies andideas before outlining them in greater detail in the final weeks of anelection (Gould, 1998). The key areas of the emergent strategic processwhen applied to political marketing strategy begin with an analysis ofthe current situation and then follow this with constant monitoring andfeedback to check and possibly alter campaign decisions during the lastfew weeks and days of an election campaign. Both during and after theinitial analysis, it is essential to monitor events and react to initiatives. Itmay also be essential to develop new initiatives (Mandelson, 1988;Worcester and Mortimore, 1999). Continuing analysis and monitoringof opponents, voter intentions, attitudes, outside events, and media cov-erage are essential elements of the emergent process during the periodprior to elections (see, for example, Baer, 1995; Bradshaw, 1995; Butlerand Kavanagh, 1997 and 2002).
In emergent processes, message development and rebuttal have be-come important strategies in the final weeks of election campaigning(Newman, 1994; Gould, 1998). The teams that will undertake such
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tasks are usually organised and planned in advance (Jacobson, 1985;Hofrichter, 1999) and, in this sense, they follow a prescriptive plan.However, the process must be sensitive to and react to the issues of theactual election campaign and, in this sense, it is emergent. In conclu-sion, this whole approach is quite different from a typical marketingproduct or service relaunch, where the product or service remains es-sentially the same for the first few months of its life and is not changed.It follows that political marketing strategy is quite different–the empha-sis of the main messages may well change–either subtly or with a realshift of emphasis–during the course of the campaign.
CONCLUSIONS ON CONTEXT, CONTENT AND PROCESSIN POLITICAL MARKETING STRATEGY
The approach of context, content, and process offers a different per-spective on political marketing strategy in two main areas. First, it privi-leges the political and social context of an individual country that iscrucial to strategy development. This is not captured in the widely usedparties-as-companies, voter-as-customers analogy. Second, it high-lights the process in the final period of an election campaign as well asin the earlier periods of election activity. Again, this insight is a usefultool in the development of political marketing strategy that is not pres-ent in some existing approaches. Having argued for this additional con-cept, we would like to add two areas of caution, one being specific to theconcept and the other a more general one:
1. With regard to the application of context, content, and process: theconcept may be simpler than the reality. The difficulty is that allthree elements influence each other. The type of research requiredto identify such a complex range of influences may be difficult todesign and implement. Moreover, the approach emphasises thedynamic of strategy development and the constant change is diffi-cult to explore in practice (Burton and Shea, 2003; Romer et al.,2003). In business strategy, context-content-process research hasoften involved lengthy timeframes, multi-level interviews andsubstantial interpretation (see Pettigrew et al., 2002, for more de-tail). However, we believe that recent research into political mar-keting strategy has recognised this difficulty and attempted toovercome it.
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2. Although we have argued that context, content, and process pres-ents a useful additional approach to political marketing strategydevelopment, this is not the only new approach. For example, wepresent new ideas on the application of relationship marketing byBannon and on modelling external events by Smith later in thisspecial edition. But there are many areas that remain, at best, onlypartially explored. For example:
• The resource-based view of marketing strategy–this relativelynew concept in marketing remains largely untouched in the lit-erature. Our own paper, which explores this in the context ofUK elections, sets out a research agenda that could be exploredfurther (Lynch et al., 2005).
• Knowledge-based developments in marketing strategy–this con-cept from business strategy presents new insights into strategydevelopment that deserve to be explored but remain unexam-ined to the present.
• Research into the dynamic nature of political strategy develop-ment is embryonic although understandably it is difficult to de-termine between cause and effect in this context (see Burton andShea, 2003; Romer et al., 2003).
Having outlined these words of caution, we now turn to the papers inspecial edition. They are outlined in the next section from a context-content-process perspective, the theme of this special edition of theJournal of Political Marketing.
THE STRUCTURE OF THIS SPECIAL EDITION
The editors of this special edition would like to acknowledge the con-tributions of a number of people in the development of this issue. Wewould like to thank the contributors of the articles. They waited patientlywhilst their papers went through the process of double-blind review andprepared and amended their papers accordingly when requested. Unfor-tunately, a number of papers were also rejected in the process althoughwe hope that comments from our reviewers strengthened the papers forsubmission in other journals. Finally, we would like to thank the review-ers of this special edition who gave their time to undertake double-blindreviews of the article submissions on which this special edition is based.The reviewers include the following:
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Dr. Ross Brennan, Middlesex University Business School, London, UKProfessor Phil Harris, University of Otago, Dunedin, New ZealandProfessor David Farrell, Manchester University, Manchester, UKJohn Egan, Middlesex University Business School, London, UKDr. Maggie Scammell, London School of Economics, London, UKDavid Jarrett, Middlesex University Business School, London, UKDr. Dominic Wring, Loughborough University, Loughborough, UKDr. Kevin Moloney, Bournemouth Media School, Bournemouth, UKChristian Scheucher, Christian Scheucher Consulting, Vienna, Austria
This special edition grew out of the Annual Conference of the Politi-cal Marketing Special Interest Group of the UK-based Academy ofMarketing. It was held in London in September 2003 and hosted by us atMiddlesex University. Thus, we would like to thank the Academy ofMarketing and Middlesex University for starting, and encouraging thewhole process, which has now led to this publication. In addition, wealso obtained articles from people who did not attend the Political Mar-keting conference, through calls for papers extended through the Jour-nal of Political Marketing and by e-mail to various lists of interestedparties. Finally, we would like to thank Professor Bruce Newman, theeditor of the Journal of Political Marketing and Haworth Press Inc., thepublisher. Bruce’s advice, encouragement and guidance have been in-valuable throughout in the development of the quality of the articles forthis special edition.
This special edition of the Journal of Political Marketing is organ-ised into two sections. The first contains six papers from academic con-tributors. The second section contains two commentary pieces on recentelections, designed to demonstrate how the theory of strategy operatesin practice.
The first paper by Cwalina, Falkowski, and Kaid compares and con-trasts US and Polish voting behavior in presidential elections. The stra-tegic context is therefore that of an evolving (Poland), compared to anestablished (United States) democracy. The data examines the way thatimage of state officials should be created in order to appeal efficiently tovoters and to influence their behaviour. The strategic process of devel-oping the political image is shown to be influenced by the mutualstrengthening of existing image and its effects. Although there are dif-ferences between the two countries, political advertising plays an im-portant role in creating politicians’ images.
The second paper by Worcester and Mortimore is a quantitativestudy of voter behavior. However, the strategic context is the UK gen-
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eral election where issues of party policy, party image, and the imageof the leader are examined as a “political triangle” of related areas.The authors show how these three related areas change over the courseof an election campaign as the strategic process unfolds. The emphasisis on the details of the polling questions used and on how the data isanalysed, showing in particular how each technique lends itself to asummary of the findings in an easily comprehensible form–the trianglereferred to above. Thus the strategic content of the triangle is related tothe strategic process of image change and policy change over the time ofthe election period with this being monitored and presented to the par-ties commissioning the polling.
Our third paper by Bannon takes a very different approach. Its focusis on the strategic process of the relationships that are built by politicalparties and politicians as they seek (re)election. Bannon applies the rela-tively recent concepts of Relationship Marketing to political marketing,arguing that the strategic content of a strong relationship is less likely tolead to voter volatility and more likely to develop mutual benefits forsupporters and the political party. He concludes that such processes arefluid and dynamic in their impact on the strategic content of the strengthof such relationships.
The fourth paper by Smith takes a conceptual approach to examinehow politically significant events, like the war in Iraq, can influence andbe influenced by the image of political parties. Thus, the strategic con-text of an outside event is used to develop a model of voter behaviourthat includes both strategic content, such as party image, and the strate-gic process, such as actions to combat any negative image. Each of theelements of the model is considered in turn with a future researchagenda being identified.
The fifth paper by Dermody and Hanmer-Lloyd identifies a strategiccontext that the authors claim appears to be increasingly important inmodern western societies: the lack of trust in public figures and politicalparties, especially among young people. Young British voters are ana-lysed in terms of strategic content and classified into four segments ofyoung voters and non-voters. The strategic process of building trust be-tween these young voters and political parties is then considered using amix of calculative, predictive and identification trust-building strategies.
The sixth paper by Baines takes as its strategic context the way thatAmerican political parties develop their messages and disseminatethem. It then explores the extent to which the strategic processes that areinvolved can be translated to a UK context. He argues that the strategiccontent of a particular policy and the strategic process of message de-
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velopment offer scope in providing parties with the necessary means toengage the electorate, providing insights from American best practice.Nevertheless, the paper shows that the different strategic context of theUSA and the UK mitigate against the wholesale migration of Americanknow-how, restricting technology transfer to fund-raising techniquesand the incorporation of opposition and market research techniques intothe development and dissemination of the message.
Finally, we welcome two practitioner contributions. The paper byMaarek argues that professionalized communications per se are an in-sufficient criterion for success in elections. He cites Lionel Jospin’sfailed campaign as evidence in the 2002 French Presidential Elections,underlining the importance of what he calls the “authenticity in policydevelopment.” He provides insights into both the content and process ofpolitical marketing strategy. Our second practitioner paper, by Róka,outlines how Hungarians voted in their first European parliamentaryelection, indicating that trust of politicians is as poor in the new Euro-pean Union states as it is in the established members of the EU. She un-derlines elements of process, content and context in her analysis.
AUTHOR NOTES
Dr. Paul Baines is Principal Lecturer in Marketing and Director of Business Develop-ment at Middlesex University Business School in London. He holds bachelor’s, mastersand doctoral degrees from Manchester School of Management, UMIST. He is a CharteredMarketer and a full member of the Market Research Society. He is the author/co-author ofover thirty articles on the use of marketing techniques in non-conventional services envi-ronments, particularly for political parties and candidates. He is co-editor, with BalChansarkar, of Introduction to Marketing Research (MU Press), co-author of Contempo-rary Strategic Marketing with Ross Brennan and Paul Garneau (Palgrave Press), with BalChansarkar, of Introducing Marketing Research (John Wiley & Sons.), and ContemporaryPR Practice (Butterworth-Heinemann), co-written with John Egan and Frank Jefkins.Paul’s recent marketing consultancy and business development projects include marketingresearch consultancy for a high-profile football club, a large aerospace maintenance com-pany, a national charity, an advertising agency and an examination board and managementdevelopment programmes for various public and private sector organisations in the UK,Hong Kong, Malaysia and Romania.
Professor Richard Lynch is Professor of Strategic Management at Middlesex Uni-versity Business School in London. He originally studied at UMIST, Leeds Universityand the London Business School. He then spent over 20 years in business withwell-known companies such as J Walter Thompson, Kraft Jacobs Suchard and DalgetySpillers in positions in marketing and corporate strategy. During the early 1980s, hewas a director of two public companies before setting up his own consultancy company
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specialising in European and international strategy. In the 1990s, he became increas-ingly involved in Higher Education, eventually taking a full-time professorship in1999. He has written four books on European issues, focussing on the interface be-tween marketing strategy and the politics of the European Union. He has publishedwidely in research journals and written a major textbook, Corporate Strategy, nowpublished in three languages.
Address correspondence to Dr. Paul Baines, Middlesex University Business School,The Burroughs, London, NW4 4BT, UK (E-mail: [email protected]).
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