Market-Oriented Governing Leaders’ Communication: John Key and Barack Obama

ABSTRACT

In the field of political marketing much study has been devoted to the examination of how political parties adopt a market-orientation when seeking office. However, scholars are increasingly noting the difficulties parties face in maintaining a market-orientation and a positive public image once in government. More recent political marketing studies have promoted greater importance of the communication used by governing leaders. This article outlines a new framework for how contemporary market-oriented governing leaders could use communication during the noncampaign period in an attempt to avoid the public image problems faced by their predecessors. The articlethen highlights analysis from four case studies done according to the framework. The findings suggested that contemporary market-oriented governing leaders are using some of the communication strategies suggested by the framework. However, the findings also suggested these governing leaders’ communication did not correlate with some of the most important aspects of the initial framework.

KEYWORDS:

• Challenges
• communication
• credibility
• governing/government/office
• leader/leadership
• listening
• market-oriented/market-orientation

Notes

1. A suggestion from the initial framework used prior to the development of the final framework after case study analysis had been completed.