Political Socialization; a Context for Relational Marketing

The advent of political marketing theory can be considered as a combination of marketing and policy knowledge. Accordingly, any changes or improvements in the fundamental concepts of marketing and policy science could be applied in political marketing. In recent years, one of the key challenges of marketing has been establishing long term relations with customers and their loyalty. Many studies in marketing literature have been done in this area, but almost none of them concentrated on the following question: how can a political party could establish a long-term relationship with citizens and make them loyal to the party? The purpose of this study is to provide a relational model for political marketing in the context of a long-term relationship with citizens (voters) based on trust and mutual commitment. Our research methodology is the content analysis of scientific documents in the fields of marketing and politics. In this study, we consider political marketing as a process. At first, current political marketing models were studied to show their weaknesses. Then, according to the new definition of marketing, value creation process applied in our model. Finally, the process of political socialization for creating a common political culture and a context for value definition (as the basis of the model) was explained. Political relational marketing through creating mutual commitment and trust between political organizations and voters, reduces the risk of voting and facilitates the voters’ decision making process and their loyalty.