ABSTRACT
According to marketing principles, any successful commercial organisation that wishes to maintain and increase its share of the market needs to provide its existing and prospective consumers with what they want, at the price they want, when they want it and how they want it. In recent years, this principle has moved across into the political sphere with political parties seemingly adopting a market orientation to their various electoral activities (Kotler and Kotler 1999). According to O’Cass, this is unavoidable, as “the very essence of a candidate and political party’s interface with the electorate is a marketing one” (1996, p. 47). Thus we hear it suggested that “the consumer has become a god-like figure, before whom markets and politicians alike bow” (Gabriel and Lang 1999, p. 1).
