Robert P. Ormrod

A Conceptual Model of Political Market Orientation

SUMMARY This article proposes eight constructs of a conceptual model of political market orientation, taking inspiration from the business and political marketing literature. Four of the constructs are ‘behavioural’ in that they aim to describe the process of how information flows through the organisation. The remaining four constructs are attitudinal, designed to capture the awareness of members to the activities and importance of stakeholder groups in society, both internal and external to the organisation. The model not only allows the level of a partys political market orientation to be assessed, but also aids the party in making a context-specific decision with regard to the reallocation–or not–of party resources in order to attain the partys long-term objectives.

A Critique of the Lees-Marshment Market-Oriented Party Model

This article presents conceptual and empirical criticisms of the Lees-Marshment market-oriented party model. Conceptual criticisms are the short-term approach, the narrow focus on voters, the nature of the relationship to competitors, a tendency towards centralisation and the lack of a distinction between the related concepts of ‘market orientation’ and ‘marketing orientation’. Empirical studies demonstrate problems with the model when applied to certain party types and electoral systems, the limitations on implementation of the model due to ideology and scarce resources, the partial application of the model in practice, and the constraints on the market-oriented party when in government.

Political market orientation and strategic party postures in Danish political parties

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between the strategic postures and political market orientation profile of two Danish parties. Profile stability at the organisational level is used as a control variable.Design/methodology/approach – The strategic political postures of two Danish parties are derived using a self‐typing study. Based on configuration theory, ideal organisational profiles to implement these studies are juxtaposed with the actual political market orientation profile for each party, gained from two datasets analysed using Partial Least Squares. Member activity levels are used to control for organisational stability.Findings – The self‐typing study revealed that Party A was perceived to follow a relationship builder posture, and Party B a convinced ideologist posture. However, both market orientation profiles resembled the organisational structures of a convinced ideologist. Thus, Party A exhibits a mismatch between strategic orientation and implemented org...

Political Marketing: Theory and Concepts

Introduction Theorical Issues in Political Marketing Defining Political Marketing Theories and Concepts in Political Marketing The Triadic Interaction Model of Political Exchange Critical Perspectives on Political Marketing Political Marketing and Theories of Democracy The Ethics of Political Marketing Conceptual Issues in Political Marketing Political Relationship Marketing Strategic Political Postures Political Market Orientation Political Marketing Strategy and Party Organizational Structure Symbolism in Political Marketing Conclusion: Research Agendas for Political Marketing and Political Marketing Management

Strategic Political Postures and Political Market Orientation: Toward an Integrated Concept of Political Marketing Strategy

Recently, the areas of strategic political marketing and political market orientation have been the subject of several conceptual articles that have provided the theoretical foundations for further empirical work. However, despite the close conceptual relatedness of the proposed concepts, they have yet to be integrated to provide a more nuanced framework that both researchers and political marketing practitioners can utilize in the development of strategies and offerings with which to achieve their organizational goals. The aim of this conceptual article is to address this deficit by developing an integrated concept of political marketing strategy using two complementary frameworks, namely strategic political postures and political market orientation (PMO). The authors introduce the two main concepts and derive for each of the strategic posture-specific PMO profiles as well as interconstruct relationships.

Political market orientation A framework for understanding relationship structures in political parties

This article is motivated by the growing need to integrate the current political science and marketing literature in order to provide a deeper understanding of the behaviour of political actors and their relationships with relevant stakeholder groups. In our article, we demonstrate how Ormrod’s conceptual model of political market orientation complements political science models of party organization by drawing attention to the competing interests of stakeholders in shaping party strategy and organizational structure. We treat parties as a multitude of actors rather than as monolithic entities and thus address the dearth of literature on the micro foundations of parties. Whilst the underlying conceptualization of a political market orientation draws on the management-based ‘relationship marketing’ approach, we acknowledge that the commercial and political contexts are not isomorphic, and thus we strive for contextual sensitivity. By adopting this approach it is hoped that the fears noted by political scientists that political marketing is solely concerned with applying standard management models to political parties with the resulting emphasis on communication tactics at election time, together with a more general ‘commodification’ of politics, can be assuaged.

Different Facets of Market Orientation: A Comparative Analysis of Party Manifestos

In this study, we employ the concept of political market orientation to better understand how the main political parties in the United Kingdom and Germany relate to other stakeholders in the political sphere through an exploratory content analysis of their core election offering, the manifesto. This study has two aims: first, we will discuss the different facets of the market orientation of the main U.K. and German parties in their respective 2005 general elections through an exploratory content analysis, and second, we will compare characteristics of market orientation between the two countries. While the U.K. parties generally exhibited similar levels of market orientation on each of the relevant construct dimensions, the German parties had more distinct profiles; thus, the applied dimensions of political market orientation show discriminatory power within and across electoral systems. In the United Kingdom, it was found that there was a marketplace-determined “gravitational center effect” that limited the political market orientation of the manifesto, while this was less pronounced in Germany. This leads to the hypothesis that certain aspects of political market orientation may be mediated by structural variables such as the electoral system.

Political marketing orientation: confusions, complications, and criticisms

In this article, we seek to distinguish between two concepts often conflated in the literature: political market orientation and political marketing orientation. In the discussion, we focus specifically on voters rather than other actors in the political sphere such as competing parties, party members, the media, and lobby groups due to the centrality of the electorate in the political marketing literature and in political practice. We identify five key issues that influence the ability of parties and candidates to successfully leverage a well-developed political marketing orientation. These are (1) that it is difficult to control symbolization, (2) that it is difficult to control personality, (3) that there are value and symbol abnormalities, (4) that the public mind is unknowable, and (5) the corrupting power of negative campaigning. Finally, we distinguish two areas of further research, “downstream” research focused on political marketing orientation and “upstream” research focused on political market orientation, with specific recommendations for further research.

The triadic interaction model of political marketing exchange

Non-commercial exchanges including social and political ones have become an accepted marketing explanandum since the broadening debate of marketing of the 1970s. In order to build a theory of political marketing, a rigorous understanding of the nature of the political exchange needs to be developed beyond the simplistic assumption of being synonymous with commercial exchange. The service characteristics of the political offering only make full sense if understood as being triadic interactions rather than dyadic exchanges. Thus, the presumptive effect of political services only comes to the fore if the interaction between candidates and voters (in the electoral market) is seen as interdependent with interactions between the candidates in the legislative assembly (in the parliamentary market) and between legislators and citizens (in the governmental market) as part of a wider political exchange system. This triadic structure of the political exchange nuances the current research focus by embedding the electoral interaction within a wider interaction system. Our article thus provides an initial attempt to develop a broadened concept on which further theory building as well as empirical analysis in political marketing can be based.

Understanding Voter Orientation in the Context of Political Market Orientation: Is the Political Customer King?

Abstract This article develops a conceptual framework and measurement model of political market orientation (PMO). The relationships between different behavioural aspects of PMO and the attitudinal influences of such behaviour are analysed, and the study includes structural equation modelling to test several hypotheses. While the results show that political parties focus on several different aspects of market-oriented behaviour, especially using an internal and societal orientation as cultural antecedents, a more surprising result is the inconclusive effect of a voter orientation on PMO. This lends support to the argument of ‘looking beyond the customer’ in political marketing research and practice. The article discusses the findings in the context of the existing literature on political marketing and commercial market orientation.