Democratic Malaise: A Proposed Theoretical Conceptualization for Marketing Malaise

Abstract

Commercial marketing is a business philosophy that places the needs of the consumer at the beginning of the sales process rather than at the end, and its practises include the development, pricing, promotion, and distribution of goods and services. The decades following the 1960s were characterized by the intrusion of marketing into politics around the world, with Western liberal democracies being early adopters of this mode. Political marketing is the adaptation of the philosophy, principles, concepts, and techniques of commercial marketing to the political world. Research shows that citizens living in democratic regimes are critical and skeptical of democratic practices. Political marketing raises ethical questions, which has led researchers to pose the hypothesis of a “marketing malaise,” connecting political marketing with citizens’ malaise about political representation. Building on these concerns and relying on the existing literature, this article proposes the first theoretical conceptualization for the marketing malaise hypothesis. As citizens’ perceptions and understanding of politics go through the media, we propose a conceptualization of marketing malaise by mobilizing an intermediate variable: the media coverage of politics. The theoretical conceptualization includes the integration of political marketing by political organizations and the media and its impacts on citizens and democracy.

Keywords:

• political marketing
• marketing malaise
• political marketing theory
• theoretical conceptualization
• democratic malaise
• media
• democracy
• the media coverage of politics

Acknowledgements

This article is based on my doctoral thesis. I want to express my sincere thanks to my thesis supervisor, Thierry Giasson, professor at Laval University, who guided and helped me with his comments. I would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers of JPM.

Disclosure statement

The authors report there are no competing interests to declare.

Notes

1 This inventory does not claim to be exhaustive, although every effort has been made by the author of the text to arrive at as complete a picture as possible of the state of the art in the communication, marketing and political science literature regarding the democratic impacts of political marketing.

2 We believe that the use of political marketing by interest groups has affected democracy. However, we believe that a separate theoretical model is needed to account for their unique character, since their activities are not aimed at holding or retaining the power of political institutions.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Canada Graduate Scholarships – Doctoral Program (The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) of Canada) and Doctoral Scholarship 2010-2011 (Quebec’s Research Funding – Society and Culture).