A resource-based view of the political party and value creation for the voter-citizen: an integrated framework for political marketing

Abstract

The study of marketing by political parties has been a steadily growing theme in academia over the past two decades. However, theory of marketing by political parties could be said to be in a pre-paradigmatic stage, as there is no general theory of political marketing. This is not to say a general theory is preferable or even possible, but it does present the discipline with a number of issues and raises many questions about moving political marketing to a stronger theory base. Such a stage of development presents great opportunities for those interested in political marketing to identify and debate many of the important aspects of applying marketing to political campaigns, which raises significant theoretical and practical issues. One such issue relates to the foundation of political marketing, which is being built on by theory from the commercial marketing domain. This does not lessen the discipline, but opens up opportunities to explore the nature of political marketing and debate the transition, smooth or otherwise, of commercial marketing theory into the political domain. It also provides opportunity to discuss the development by political parties of specific capabilities to deliver greater value to the voter-citizen, and what resources and capabilities are needed to do this. These two theoretical platforms highlight two major issues that if brought together offer significant opportunities to advance the discipline of political marketing — these being the resource-based view of the firm and value creation and delivery.