ABSTRACT
This chapter will explore how political marketing can be applied to the party or candidate organisation itself. There are two aspects to this: one is what marketers would call internal marketing, as it concerns marketing to those within the organisation. In politics, this means volunteers such as members. The aim is to apply marketing principles and techniques to ensure that volunteers become and remain effective activists for the party. The second is how to manage the implementation of a market-orientation. While this is not traditionally part of internal marketing in marketing textbooks, and of course not all parties adopt a market-orientation, political marketing research has shown that those that have tried to change the product to respond to electorate demands in some way often encounter barriers from party culture and stakeholders, even if such changes might help the party win the next election. Just the idea of a market-orientation and responding more to public demands over traditional party beliefs and ideals raises concern among volunteers and party figures, who have strong investments in, and attachment to, the party or candidate and strong views on how to change the world: that is why they got into politics in the first place. The implementation of a market-orientation therefore has to be managed as well as the volunteers.1
