The Role of Communication in the Process of Forming Market-Oriented Party (Mop): Its Importance and Approaches

Abstract

This paper discusses the role of communication in the process of market-oriented political modeling. Our theoretical framework benefits from the idea of Lees-Marshment’s model, there are three types of parties that can help meet voters’ needs: product-oriented party (POP), sales-oriented party (SOP) and market-oriented party (MOP). The focus here is MOP, which means developing political policies on the ground of voters’ needs to gain from the voter “market”. The MOP approach relies heavily on effective party-voter communication, before, during and after an election. Specifically, the communication aspect in the process of the MOP approach is discussed, which covers political marketing as a social or communication process in image-building and different approaches in such communication. Various communication modes in gathering voter information are compared in terms of advantages and disadvantages, especially in trust-building and two-way (both verbal and non-verbal) communications. Lastly, a section related to political canvassing is also presented.