Political advertising and the demonstration of market orientation

The purpose of this paper is to relate manifest market orientation to the achievement of electoral objectives.

The paper presents an analysis of advertising content against a framework of criteria drawn from key marketing concepts using examples from recent New Zealand general elections.

There is a relationship between parties demonstrating a strong voter orientation in their political advertisements and achievement of electoral success. By viewing advertising as a symptom of parties' broader market orientation, the political marketing factors that differentiate the “winner/s” from the others in an election campaign may be uncovered.

The framework has only been applied to New Zealand Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) election campaigns. To make a more concrete connection between demonstration of market orientation and electoral success the framework needs to be tested in more than one electoral system, in more than one country.

The paper reveals a useful way to relate political advertising content to electoral outcome.

This framework has not been used before in the political advertising or political marketing fields. It strengthens the utility of political marketing explanations in relation to voter‐ and media‐generated explanations of election outcomes.