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.