Positioning Political Parties

Abstract

Political parties enjoy a symbiotic relationship with the media. Like commercial organizations, parties must know where they stand in their “market.” Marketing is not an activity that political parties may indulge in at their discretion; it is a constant and necessary political function that they attend to implicitly or explicitly, successfully or otherwise. The concern of this article is to move the analysis of political marketing to the strategic level. Rather than analyzing parties in terms of ideology, historical origin, or policy platforms, we consider them in terms of relative market standing or competitive position.