Marketing mix and political campaigns

Abstract

Armenia had Parliamentary Elections in 2017 and 2018. According to the OSCE reports, unlike the 2017 elections, the 2018 elections had a general absence of vote-buying, pressure on the voter, and other negative phenomena (OSCE, 2017, OSCE, 2019). Along with the changes in the political environment, the election results were considerably different too as the power distribution changed in the Parliament. However, there was one party that successfully remained in its condition: The Prosperous Armenia Party (PAP) got elected as the second largest party in the Parliament both in 2017 and 2018. Considering the lack of vote-buying and other negative phenomena in the 2018 elections, the main tool that the parties were left with for boosting their votes was the pre-election campaign. Thus, a question arose: did PAP alter its campaign methods to adjust to the new political environment in the country? The main focus of this research was comparing the 2017 and 2018 campaigns to see whether there were any differences or not. A desk study was conducted at first. The data collected were the campaign plans, candidate lists, and CVs, and media coverage for both years. Then, content analysis was conducted. The results of the analysis were discussed within the scopes of the Niffenegger model. The model suggests that the 4Ps of the marketing mix can be used for developing winning campaigns. Within the scopes of this research, the model was mainly used for guidance when organizing and making sense of the data. The main differences found between the two campaigns were in the product and price. The research also contributes to the model, by suggesting to consider the candidates as a part of the product when employing the model for parties and not individual candidates.