On and off over the next couple of months I will blog about a special issue of Customer Needs and Solutions (CNS), I co-edited this with David Schweidel at Emory. The intention of Min Ding, the CNS editor, was to promote the linkages between marketing and politics. To show that politics and marketing fit together very naturally.
The Crossover Between Politics And Marketing
The crossover is dramatic. Marketing academia in the US has perhaps been a little slower to do work in this area than some others. (Such as scholars housed in politics and non-US based scholars). I don’t want to overstate that. There has been some great work from US-based marketing scholars. There is, however, definitely room for more. This might be particularly the case as more data becomes available. Some of the traditional barriers to research at the interface of marketing and politics are therefore going away.
The questions available to scholars at the connection of marketing and politics are extensive and fascinating. Some we highlight in our editorial include:
“Is it best to adopt more extreme policies for the primary? Is moving back to the center for the general election possible? Will this look inauthentic? Is a consistent position more appealing to the voters even if the majority will not always agree with you on every issue?”
Schweidel and Bendle, 2019
Over the next few months I will highlight the contributions of the authors in the special issue. These look at, amongst other things, why to study politics and marketing. Further work will be on empirical and theoretical modeling. Research will even go as far as noting regulatory issues. The importance of which seems to be becoming more obvious ever passing week.
Politics And Marketing Fit Together Very Naturally
Ideally, our work is part of a movement to tackle these fascinating marketing and societal questions. For example, our explicit hope is that: “This special issue of Customer Needs and Solutions aims to stimulate research with a political focus and embraces a variety of perspectives around the intersection of politics and marketing” (Schweidel and Bendle, 2019). Fingers crossed.
For more on political marketing see here, here, and here.
Read: David A. Schweidel and Neil Bendle (2019) Marketing and Politics: Strange Bedfellows No More, Customer Needs and Solutions, page 1-4, https://doi.org/10.1007/s40547-019-00104-2