Abstract

Political marketing is a new, fast-developing area of nonprofit marketing, and like all other areas of non-commercial activity enjoys its fair share of academic debates, ethical issues and practical problems. The study of political marketing historically suffered from the same fate of early business marketing: too much focus on the selling of politics rather than the design of the political product. In the last decade, however, new scholars have applied wider marketing theory to politics in a more effective and illuminating manner. This chapter will set out a comprehensive approach to political marketing, a model of political marketing behaviour for political parties alongside examples of global practice and raise a number of issues and debates within political marketing.