Abstract

This paper explores the contribution of marketing to Western politics. Moving away from traditional views of marketing located in means-end relationships, it examines contemporary views of marketing that focus on consumption as a process of signification and representation. This more radical perspective offers contemporary insight into the many manifestations of political consumption, and the meanings the electorate ascribe to them, both individually and socially. This contemporary approach challenges critics’ claims that marketing encourages politics to be shallow. It offers far more in-depth insight into the electorate and their appreciation, understanding and relationship with politics.