Local political marketing in the context of the conservative party

Reeves, P

Abstract

Local political marketing can be defined as marketing related strategy, activities, and tactics implemented by a political party in a local geographic constituency, in order to attempt to maximise aggregate potential voter satisfaction, and therefore maximise total number of votes and electoral support in the constituency. Through 12 in-depth interviews with Local Constituency Party representatives from the Conservative Party, the study found that local political marketing was acknowledged by a majority of respondents although this was not unequivocal, and was frequently conflated with campaigning. Local political marketing was associated with: visual identity, language/messages, values, image, communication devices, awareness raising, data management and targeting, and simplification. The support from higher levels of the party in local political marketing was varied across constituencies. There was evidence of growing coordination /influence by higher levels of the party in local political marketing. However, this tended to be in seats judged as ‘winnable’.

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Publication Date: May 14, 2013
• Deposit Date: Feb 11, 2015
• Publicly Available Date: Apr 5, 2016
• Journal: Journal of Nonprofit & Public Sector Marketing
• Print ISSN: 1049-5142
• Electronic ISSN: 1540-6997
• Publisher: Routledge
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 25
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 127-163
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/10495142.2013.760990
• Keywords: politics, marketing, local, conservative, election, qualitative
• Publisher URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10495142.2013.760990
• Related Public URLs: http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/wnon20/current
• Additional Information: Access Information : This is an Author's Accepted Manuscript of an article published in Journal of Non-profit and Public Sector Marketing, 2013 [copyright Taylor & Francis], available online at: http://www.tandfonline.com/ [10.1080/10495142.2013.760990]