An exploratory assessment of the political product: proclamations of the faithful

The use of marketing to create connections between political parties, individual voters and society at large, is an important area in need of research. Understanding such connections are vitally important for effective and efficient use of marketing in politics and also for improvement in the delivery of the political offering to society. A fundamental question concerning political marketing focuses on; what political party managers and members perceive their product to be. This study reports data gathered to explore the characteristics proposed by Kotler and Kotler (1981) and Kotler (1985) and the structural and process characteristics discussed by Butler and Collins (1994). To investigate these issues a series of in-depth interviews were conducted and a survey of political party executives, branch chairman, candidates and campaign managers was undertaken. Some interesting findings were obtained on what constitutes the political product and what the peculiar structural and process characteristics of political marketing are.