eThesis - School of Business electronic theses

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Objectives

This study examines political marketing and how political organizations are creating value to their customers, ie. the voter-citizens, through the means of political and relationship marketing. The focus is from a managerial perspective to help determine how political organizations could better create value to their customers and build long-term beneficial relationships with them in order to become more successful. The empirical research will be based in the Finnish political field, and therefore the aim of the study is to answer questions on how Finnish political parties are creating value to their voter-citizens.

Methods

The theoretical framework of the study is based on three main theories; political marketing, value creation, and relationship marketing. For the empirical research, a qualitative study method was chosen, and the study was conducted through six semi-structured interviews. The six interviews were made up of three pairs representing the three biggest political parties in Finland, and each pair consisted of a representative of the political organization and an active voter-citizen. The three pairs were first examined separately according to the theoretical framework, then analyzed together thematically providing some managerial implications.

Results

All three political organizations under study had adopted the principles of political marketing to some degree, and had lately begun to renew the marketing and communication channels of their organizations to endorse a more relationship focused approach. Still communication was somewhat onesided, and the interaction opportunities of the voter-citizens could be improved on in all organizations to better enable creation of value to the customers.