Perception of the Role of Marketing in Nigerian Politics: The Electorates' Perspective
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IFE Busines School
Abstract
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The objective of this paper is to examine how .
Nigerian electorates perceive the role of marketing in
democratic politics. The basis of this objective is that
political patties (the major institutions of democratic
politics) operate in a complex and ·uncertain
environment, where they consistently reel out
manifestoes that are hardly fulfilled. This gives the
electorate a reason to suspect all actions and strategies
of political actors. Since effective utilization of .
marketing strategies has the potential of bridging the
perceptual gap between political parties and their
electorates (Baines, 1996), this paper seeks to confirm
this stance by exploring the role of marketing in politics
from the perspective of Nigerian electorates. In pursuit
of this objective, Nigeria was stratified into six
geopolitical zones, out of which a representative sample
of 400 respondents was drawn to respond to our
questionnaire, 3 15 copies of the questionnaire were
returned; and after editing, only 300 copies were found
usable. In measuring the construct and analyzing the
data. the paper adopted CETSCALE which was
developed and psychometrically validated by Vida and Am itrovic (200 I ).The findings shov. that marketing
strategies do not play extremely positive role in politics.
In fact, only 52% of electoral success in Nigeria is
ascribable to marketing strategies while the remaining
48% derives from anti-democratic forces like
government interest, godfatherism, ethnicism, and
electoral vices. Based on these findings, it is
recommended that the electoral reform should equip
the electoral umpire to carry out its responsibilities
without fear or favour.
Keywords
H Social Sciences (General), JA Political science (General)