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.