Are Voters Consumers

Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal
Emerald Article: Are voters, consumers?: A qualitative exploration of the voter-consumer analogy in political marketing
Norman Peng, Chris Hackley

Article information:
To cite this document: Norman Peng, Chris Hackley, (2009),"Are voters, consumers?: A qualitative exploration of the voter-consumer analogy in political marketing", Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal, Vol. 12 Iss: 2 pp. 171 186
Permanent link to this document: http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/13522750910948770 Downloaded on: 05-02-2013
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There is also important and well-respected work which has tried to bridge and compare different aspects of television and the surrounding issues, such as Professor
Newman’s book on political advertising (Newman, 1999) and Professor
O’Shaughnessy’s work on political marketing (O’Shaughnessy, 1990).
Some tentative conclusions emerge from this body work. On certain occasions, the roles of the voter and consumer can overlap each other, but there is clearly a contextual difference between an election and a consumption context (Lock and Harris, 1996) with attendant differences in attitude formation and decision-making. Nevertheless, key scholars in the area (Kotler and Kotler, 1999) maintain that brand marketing management conceptual frameworks can be applied seamlessly to understanding, and also to managing, voter attitudes and behaviour in the political context. Yet, relatively few studies have explored the voting-consuming analogy empirically by focusing in on a given segment of voters and their responses to specified political marketing stimuli.
The present study responds to this research gap by uses a selected sample of
An analogy can be drawn with service marketing with regard to the intangibility and variability of the service offering (Booms and Bitner, 1981). Services, like political parties and politicians, are brands which are not defined by tangible characteristics such as engineering quality, aerodynamics or aesthetic features, but by largely intangible qualities such as trust, service, history and values. In addition, one crucial function of the brand is to act as a shorthand device to assist consumer to narrow their range of choice and to lower the uncertainty and risk associate with the product
(Feldwick, 2002). Tony Blair, along with his appearance and image, in this study did act as a shorthand device for voters to evaluate an oppositional party who had suffered from a chronic lack of credibility for the preceding 18 years.
The perceptions of Blair’s attractive persona can, though, be seen as relatively superficial aspects informing, but not determining, the consumer/voting decision.
There were also negative perceptions expressed.

The voters’ critical evaluation of the political election broadcasts
Some of these voters seemed to be able to separate their emotional responses to