Focus Groups and Political Marketing: Science and Democracy as Axiomatic?

Abstract

Focus groups are an established and influential way of generating public opinion data. They have been extensively used by the British Labour Party and are more broadly associated with marketing. Focus groups, as referred to within much of the political marketing literature and used in political practice, are underpinned by two central but largely implicit claims: first, that the use of focus groups is scientific; second, this claim to science is conflated with the normative assertion that focus groups enhance the democratic process. This article renders explicit and disentangles these underlying assumptions that inform the theory and practice of focus groups. These theoretical concerns are illustrated by reference to the Labour Party, in particular its modernisation process during the build-up to the 1997 election. By separating and interrogating these basic premises two salient issues subsequently emerge. First, it is contended that the use of focus groups, in the political marketing literature and in political practice violates 'scientific' principles. Second, it is argued that over-reliance on focus groups challenges normative claims to democracy, by confining the potential for democratic debate to the few, rather than the many.

Political Marketing Models: The Curious Incident of the Dog that Doesn't Bark

“…But there are a number of fallacies in the assumption that the use of focus groups is good for democracy, as when Gould asserts that they enable politicians 'to directly hear the voters' voices' (Gould, 1998, p. 326). As has been argued elsewhere (Savigny, 2007), parties employing marketing strategies seem to be extraordinarily selective in their use of such voter feedback. Gould's search for what Mondeo Man and Worcester Woman wanted indicates an essential truth: that New Labour's reliance on focus groups to deliver the electorate's message challenges the 'normative claims to democracy' made for political marketing methods because it is only the views of those key voters that matter (Savigny, 2007, p. 122).…”

Post-Political Poisons? Evaluating the ‘Toxic’ Dimensions of Tony Blair's Leadership

“…The 'social scientific' dimension to the research was used as a way of legitimising the Blair approach, with critics of leadership within Labour sometimes accused of being 'out of touch' with voters. However, as Savigny (2007) suggests, there are strong reasons to doubt how 'democratic' or even 'scientific' such work is. Firstly such work is often not concerned with opinions of the electorate as a whole, but rather 'floating voters' or 'Tory switchers'.…”

Stakeholders in the political marketing context

“…So whilst political marketing is different to commercial marketing on the theoretical/conceptual (e.g., Henneberg, , ; Ormrod et al, ; Savigny, ) and strategic/tactical (e.g., Baines & Lynch, ; Lock & Harris, ; O'Cass & Voola, ; Ormrod & Henneberg, ) levels, the lack of research into how the stakeholder concept can be understood in the context of political marketing—as opposed to a focus on understanding the relationships between stakeholders (Baines & Viney, )—has been carried over from the commercial sphere. This is undoubtedly exacerbated by the primary focus of political marketing research on facilitating the dyadic exchange of value between political candidates and voters, which is generally assumed to be analogous to the seller–buyer dyad in the commercial marketing context (Henneberg, ).…”