This article develops and tests a model of voter behavior in a primary election. The model integrates several schools of thought that have tried to explain voter behavior; it is tested by predicting the behavior of respondents based on the model, and then validating the results with the actual behavior of the respondents. Results obtained here provide a prediction rate of 90 percent correctly classified. The article then compares the explanatory and predictive power of the model to models that use demographic and political involvement data.

A Model of Primary Voter Behavior

The connections between political parties, the electorate (individual voters) and society at large, that may be achieved through applying marketing is an important area in need of research. Understanding such connections is vitally important for effective and efficient use of marketing in politics and also for improvement in the delivery of the political offering to society. This paper presents the findings of an exploratory research project carried out in Australia on the philosophical basis and operationalisation of marketing in politics. A survey and in‐depth interviews were undertaken to explore issues related to the application of market orientation and its relationship to the marketing concept in political marketing. The results highlight unique dimensions and relationships of marketing in politics.

Political marketing ‐ An investigation of the political marketing concept and political market orientation in Australian politics

https://isiarticles.com/bundles/Article/pre/pdf/1771.pdf

The dynamics of voter behavior and influence processes in electoral markets: a consumer behavior perspective

This study focuses on applying consumer-behavior theory to understand voter characteristics and electoral behavior. The focus is on developing a micromodel that incorporates demographics, voter involvement, political opinion leadership, political knowledge, confidence, and satisfaction. The study was undertaken in an election in Australia for a Federal Lower House of Representatives Seat. Data were gathered from a sample of registered voters, with the results showing strong support for the theory developed. The results indicated strong influences for demographics on voter involvement, resulting in a significant influence of involvement on political opinion leadership. Political opinion leadership was also shown to influence subjective voter knowledge and knowledge impacting on voter decision confidence. The findings also confirmed a strong difference in voter satisfaction depending on voter involvement. The findings have significant implications for political marketing and voter-behavior research. © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

A micromodel of voter choice: understanding the dynamics of Australian voter characteristics in a federal election

The study of marketing by political parties has been a steadily growing theme in academia over the past two decades. However, theory of marketing by political parties could be said to be in a pre-paradigmatic stage, as there is no general theory of political marketing. This is not to say a general theory is preferable or even possible, but it does present the discipline with a number of issues and raises many questions about moving political marketing to a stronger theory base. Such a stage of development presents great opportunities for those interested in political marketing to identify and debate many of the important aspects of applying marketing to political campaigns, which raises significant theoretical and practical issues. One such issue relates to the foundation of political marketing, which is being built on by theory from the commercial marketing domain. This does not lessen the discipline, but opens up opportunities to explore the nature of political marketing and debate the transition, smooth or otherwise, of commercial marketing theory into the political domain. It also provides opportunity to discuss the development by political parties of specific capabilities to deliver greater value to the voter-citizen, and what resources and capabilities are needed to do this. These two theoretical platforms highlight two major issues that if brought together offer significant opportunities to advance the discipline of political marketing — these being the resource-based view of the firm and value creation and delivery.

Avraham Shama

Papers

Applications of Marketing Concepts to Candidate Marketing