The role of marketing in Kenyan politics
Abstract
This study examines the role of marketing in Kenyan politics. The broad objective of the
research focused on the assessment of the role of marketing in the Kenyan politics. The
study targeted to establish how the functions of political marketing are applied in Kenyan
politics and determine the impact of political marketing in Kenyan political environment.
The study employed the cross-sectional survey method of research and data needed for
the study were generated from the questionnaire and interviews from 29 mps and 25
senators selected randomly from parliament and senate. The study focused on elected
politicians at the two levels of representation in parliament and senate and the data was
analyzed through descriptive statistics and presented in tables and figures. The study
findings showed that marketing functions such as product function, distribution function,
cost function, communication function, news management function, fund raising
function, parallel function and internal cohesion function are applied in Kenyan politics.
The study concludes that it is clear that independent and non corrupt free democratic
institutions, continuous emergence of people based politicians, continuous use of
marketing research, innovative politicians and marketing training for the operation of
political system are some of the impacts of political marketing in Kenya. Finally, winning
election, awareness creation and garnering swing votes are the main role of marketing in
politics to Kenyan politicians. The study recommends that to win elections in competitive
political environment in Kenya, politicians should not ignore marketing activities to
increase their chances to be elected in political offices. Lastly, the researcher
recommends that in Kenya, there is need to do more studies on marketing in politics for
policy makers to develop institutional guidelines for ethical practices of politics.
Institutions such as the Independent Boundaries Electoral Commission (IEBC) would
benefit from the studies to prevent unfair competition and political malpractice.
Publisher
University of Nairobi