The triadic interaction model of political marketing exchange

Abstract

Non-commercial exchanges including social and political ones have become an accepted marketing explanandum since the broadening debate of marketing of the 1970s. In order to build a theory of political marketing, a rigorous understanding of the nature of the political exchange needs to be developed beyond the simplistic assumption of being synonymous with commercial exchange. The service characteristics of the political offering only make full sense if understood as being triadic interactions rather than dyadic exchanges. Thus, the presumptive effect of political services only comes to the fore if the interaction between candidates and voters (in the electoral market) is seen as interdependent with interactions between the candidates in the legislative assembly (in the parliamentary market) and between legislators and citizens (in the governmental market) as part of a wider political exchange system. This triadic structure of the political exchange nuances the current research focus by embedding the electoral interaction within a wider interaction system. Our article thus provides an initial attempt to develop a broadened concept on which further theory building as well as empirical analysis in political marketing can be based.