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Political Public Opinion CapitalKosta Gouliamos a & Antonis Theocharous ba European University Cyprus , Nicosia, Cyprusb Cyprus University of Technology , Limassol, CyprusPublished online: 19 Feb 2010.

To cite this article: Kosta Gouliamos & Antonis Theocharous (2010) Political Public Opinion Capital,Journal of Political Marketing, 9:1-2, 1-8, DOI: 10.1080/15377850903472596

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Guest Editorial

Political Public Opinion Capital

KOSTA GOULIAMOSEuropean University Cyprus, Nicosia, Cyprus

ANTONIS THEOCHAROUSCyprus University of Technology, Limassol, Cyprus

This special issue is intended as an analytical approach to the wide-rangingprocess of political public opinion capital. Since it may be read as an increas-ingly sophisticated concept, the reasons for analyzing such a process at allneed to be signaled clearly from the outset of political marketing.

For the scope of conceptual precision, it is necessary to consider theterm capital separately from political public opinion—at least initially—inorder to reflect upon varied genres of their actual and potential combination.

‘‘Public opinion’’ is much more commonly used in political marketingdiscourse, not with any great precision but nearly always with pragmatic con-notations. Nevertheless, public opinion has been defined with rationality orthe sureties of empiricism, and it has been studied extensively in politicaldisciplines. Lippmann’s (2004) lengthy defense of affective factors that sofrequently distort and determine perception has served as a point of departureto the study of ‘‘opinion’’ in the broadly sociological sense normally deployedin political science, communication, marketing, and media studies.

In the political marketing context discussed here, the term politicalpublic opinion capital is further distinguishable from two closely connectedpractices: one, a practice of primary media production of perceptions and,two, systematic public opinion surveys. However, this special issue paysmore attention to the mechanisms of transition in the realm of political mar-keting. As such, it examines the rise of political consumerism, with more andmore changes being introduced by political organizations to maximize the‘‘capital’’ of public opinion, aiming at the positive relationship betweenbranches of the political apparatus and the citizens=consumers.

This consumptionist position is called into study from the perspective ofpolitical marketing. Newman, in his model of voter behavior, developed the

Address correspondence to Prof. Kosta Gouliamos, 6, Diogenes Str., Engomi, P. O. Box22006, 1516 Nicosia, Cyprus. E-mail: K.Gouliamos@euc.ac.cy

Journal of Political Marketing, 9:1–8, 2010Copyright # Taylor & Francis Group, LLCISSN: 1537-7857 print=1537-7865 onlineDOI: 10.1080/15377850903472596

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component of situational contingency by indicating that organizations‘‘are becoming more creative in their attempts to get customers’’ (1999, 262).Creativity and, in particular, innovation factors must not be so much perceivedor believed in as applied as components of a marketing communicationsstrategy.

It is obvious that modern politics may need to be understood primarilyas an innovative process within the confines of what is possible. In contrast,the question of how to put innovation culture from management models intopolitical marketing practice can only be answered in close consideration ofthe organizational climax. As the climax refers to the overall pattern oforganization (parties, candidates, governments, etc.), innovative culture hasan emotive, connotative dimension for the political behavior of the public.

Meanwhile, political organizations, both at national and internationallevel, are now more open to innovations than at any other time in history,and consequently, their culture is more accessible to the voters’ needs.Due to cybernetics, innovation becomes a reward power by locating possi-bilities for voter empowerment as well as by affecting political perceptive-ness in an instant relationship-oriented behavior. In view of this, we aretalking about a political ecosystem of its own.

The public opinion capital concept usually precedes the organization’s(party or candidate) saleable form. Campaign resources of the most variedsort are then mobilized to fill the voters’ expectations with brand name,colors, slogans, etc. to embody this omnipresence in a complex package.The public, who is brought into this complex system, is also in a strangeway the subsidizer of it, by ‘‘consuming’’ consiously or unconsiously themedia package mix.

In order to define the uniqueness as well as the conceptual=theoreticaldifferences of the political marketing system compared to the mainstreammarketing system, it is claimed that public opinion capital acts as a synchron-ous and continuous link between the political marketing tools and the physi-cal and technological possibilities.

These possibilities drew on the astonishing speed of cybernetics, whichmade it possible for the machine to redo all its calculations in response to theconstantly changing public perceptions or=and attitudes.

Nevertheless, the great technical achievement of cyberpolitics madepossible another new type of ‘‘political public opinion capital.’’ In this con-text, the use of public opinion must be reconsidered, and thus a questionneeds to be asked: under which conditions would it be possible to markthe ‘‘capital’’ relations between signifier and signified, in other wordsbetween the campaign’s ‘‘language’’ and the voter ‘‘opinion’s’’ meaning?

In our special issue, the authors examine how the ‘‘capital’’ of politicalpublic opinion is organized, how much knowledge consumers=citizenspossess, and to what extent the groups they belong to influence whetherthey are receptive to the theme of a message.

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Indeed, as the public’s receptivity to the message of a campaign is amatter of saliency (Andrews, 1983), the strategists should recognize thespecial interests of political public opinion capital not only on the basis oftheir group identification but also—equally important—on the basis ofintervening variables such as (inter alia):

. Party brand equity

. Expert power

. Resource=connection power

. Sociocultural perceptiveness=popular expectations

. Professional standards=campaign’s group performance

. Marketing intelligence gathering=communication patterns

. Mass media scrutiny

. Task-oriented behavior

. Competition between or among party mates or departments

. Conflict=crisis management

. Morality and leadership styles

. The subcultures of youth movements

. Sociability and psychographical tasks

. Political=policy innovation

. The role of reference and interest groups in the process of politicalsocialization.

Furthermore, technology or technical innovation has been viewed ascentral to the governmental politics (Barry, 2001). For example, building asearch engine marketing plan and conducting blogger outreach provides asolid foundation in a political campaign.

The ‘‘information’’ and ‘‘knowledge society’’ generation has developedthe distinct values that correspond to the above intervening variables yetcultivate a highly significant political socialization, as this cohort are‘‘voter-challenging’’ advocates of the new politics rather than ‘‘voter-sustaining’’ individuals of the old-fashioned political campaigns.

Lipset (1995) defined political socialization as (1) an enduring attitudeand way of behaving and (2) a learning process of norms, values, andbehavior patterns of the nations, groups, or subgroups to which individualsbelong.

Furthermore, political culture is transmitted through agents of politicalinnovation and political socialization. These agents are as follows:

. Family

. School

. Social organizations (including youth organizations)

. Church, community action networks

. Army

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. Informal agents (mass media, youth culture and subculture, alternativepublicity, age groups, social movements, etc.).

These agents allow individuals to transfer into political arena debates,oppositions, and antagonisms as well as other political discourse and discur-sive properties (such as lexical and speech styles or acts) rooted in therelationship between the producers and the users of the public sphere’stasks. We may assume that this relationship produces a symbolic manage-ment that enables voters to intercept or=and interpret frameworks ofinformation. Meanwhile, Ball and Farr (1989) have argued that politicalbehavior has mutable meanings that have updated changes pertinent topolitical campaigns or=and events.

Although information or interpretation frameworks and political sociali-zation have begun to develop independently within social science, it is ofparamount importance that the authors of this special issue bring togethera wide variety of interdisciplinary approaches pertinent to political marketingfactors such as political public opinion capital.

The journal issue begins with an article authored by Tereza Capelos, anassociate professor at theUniversity of Surrey. The author examines howgeneralfeelings toward political actors shape theway citizens process information aboutpolicy issues. Images of political actors are prevalent shortcuts onwhichwe relyduring political decision making (Kinder, 1986). A few studies go beyond thecognitive nature of these person-oriented heuristics and demonstrate that affect-ive reactions toward a story protagonist generate swings in the evaluations ofpolicy issues (Sniderman et al., 1991; Kuklinski and Hurley, 1994). This articleborrows from the literature on persuasion, information processing, affectiveintelligence, and motivated reasoning to measure how affective responses tothe image of a politician determine the way citizens evaluate policy proposals.

The author has utilized an experimental study that takes two actual pol-icy proposals, varies the name of the politician supporting the proposal, andmeasures participants’ reactions to the policy content. The findings show thatpolitical images function as gut-level affective shortcuts. When citizens dis-like the source of the policy, they also adjust their policy evaluations down-ward. There is also evidence of differentiation in the way political imagesaffect policy evaluation, on the basis of political knowledge and trust.

Kevin Kuan Shun Chiu and his colleagues demonstrate how personalvalues may be associated with demographic characteristics to create a bettermarket segmentation tool for investigating differences and similarities in bothparty identification and voting behavior. Their study empirically confirms theinterrelationships among demographic characteristics, party identification,and voting behavior as well as theoretical concept and empirical evidenceof personal values in marketing research.

George Nathaniel Papageorgiou provides an alternative approach for thedevelopment of effective strategies, given the high complexity and uncertainty

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in the political market landscape. The author begins by acknowledging thattraditional tools for strategy analysis become obsolete in front of the dynamiccomplexity that governs political organizations and their environments. At anext step, principles of systems thinking and system dynamics are employedin order to develop a political marketing modeling framework, whereby thesystemic effects of various strategies and policies may be analyzed dynami-cally. The developed framework gives the opportunity to the researcher orpolitical practitioner to model and simulate the feedback structure of the polit-ical marketing problem situation. The framework model draws the interrela-tionships of the political offer, the adoption rates, and the political marketgrowth and the main influences, such as the sources of attractiveness for thenew political product, the competition levels, as well as the cultural contextand decision-making processes of the actors in the system. The work pre-sented in this article provides a common communication platform for politicalparty managers, consultants, practitioners, and researchers in order to analyzethe political marketing process in a cybernetic way. Understanding andmapping the political market system dynamics interrelationships could formthe basis for designing and testing strategies for winning elections and achiev-ing political market growth and long-term political prosperity and success.

Jesper Stromback, Michael Mitrook, and Spyro Kiousis offer a concep-tual paper on the applications of public relations theory to political market-ing. As postulated by the authors, the use of public relations strategies andtactics are ubiquitous in many areas of political communication. This isespecially evident when considering the emerging field of political market-ing. However, little application of public relations theory and research hasbeen integrated into the study of political marketing processes. Thus, thisarticle seeks to bridge two schools of thought and to identify some of themajor conceptual perspectives from public relations theory that can be usedto better understand and analyze the dynamics of political marketingprocesses. Specifically, the perspectives include relationship theory, contin-gency theory, situational theory of publics, and agenda building theory.

The fifth article is written by Athanasios Hadjimanolis, associateprofessor at the European University Cyprus. The author examines the possi-bility to use political marketing concepts and methods in the promotion ofone of the main targets of a national innovation policy (i.e., the developmentof an innovation culture among private firms). Cyprus, a small peripheralcountry, is used as a case study. The current methods of promotion andthe communication activities of public innovation policy makers in Cyprusand their deficiencies are outlined. Then, a specific framework for develop-ing a relevant marketing strategy is proposed. Newer trends in politicalmarketing theory are also examined for possible application in the improve-ment of marketing strategy and its implementation.

The sixth article explores differences in political culture and perceptionsof political marketing between generations. Growing educational levels are

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significant in transforming individuals’ political culture. Changes are assumedto affect younger more than older generations. The authors of the article,Eleni Apospori, George Avlonitis, and Maria Zisouli have utilized an empiricalapproach, utilizing a random sample of 301 respondents: In order for politicalmarketing to play a leading role in the political education of the youngergeneration, it has to be trusted and ahead of the emerging political culture.The results do not support the hypothesis about the cross-generationaldifferences in perceptions of political marketing. This means that we haveto reconsider the way political marketing has been employed so far in Greece.

The last article, written by Petros Ioannides, a researcher at PanteionUniversity Athens, examines the campaign strategies of the Labour Party inGreat Britain during the elections of 2001 and 2005. Using comparative analy-sis, this research investigates the factors that contributed to the electionresults. Beginning with the issues that the party raised in both campaigns,evaluating the polls before the elections and counting the leadership ofTony Blair, the paper attempts to come to a conclusion by comparing thetwo elections with each other.

CONCLUSION

This editorial aimed to provide a theoretical contextualization of the articlesassembled in this guest issue. The concept of public opinion capital asexplained here acts as an umbrella concept that in turn accommodates thevarious theoretical and empirical frameworks that are employed by the con-tributors of this issue. Our attempt was to provide a series of critical pieces ofwork that open new avenues and offer insights in the evolving and stimulat-ing area of political marketing.

We would like to thank Bruce Newman, who has always been a sourceof intellectual stimuli for us.

We would also like to express our gratitude and appreciation to thereviewers of this guest-edited issue and the members of the organizing com-mittee of the 3rd International Political Marketing conference held in Cyprusin 2005. The conference has proved to be a fertile intellectual ground for theexchange of ideas and for the production of high-quality research papers.

Finally, we would like to thank Hellenic Bank for sponsoring the con-ference and the European University of Cyprus (formerly Cyprus College)for all the continuous support in all our research-related activities.

REFERENCES

Andrews, James. R. (1983). The practice of rhetorical criticism. New York: Macmillan.Ball, Terence and James Farr. (1989). Political innovation and conceptual change.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Barry, Andrew. (2001). Political machines: Governing a technological society.London: Athlone.

Kinder, D. (1986). Presidential character revisited. In B. Lau & D. Sears (Eds.), Polit-ical Cognition: The 19th Annual Carnegie Symposium on Cognition. Hillsdale,NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Kuklinski and Hurley. (1994). On hearing and interpreting political messages: Acautionary tale of citizen cue-taking. Journal of politics, 56(3): 729–751.

Lippmann, Walter. (1922). Public opinion. New York: Free Press.Lipset, Seymour Martin. (1995). The encyclopedia of democracy. Washington, DC:

Congressional Quarterly Books.Newman, Bruce. (1999). A predictive model of voter behavior. In Handbook of

political marketing, ed. B. Newman. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.Sniderman, Paul M., Richard A. Brody, and Philip E. Tetlock. (1991). Reasoning and

choice: Explorations in political psychology. New York: Cambridge UniversityPress.

AUTHOR NOTE

Dr. Kostas Gouliamos is professor of political communication=marketingand vice rector of the European University Cyprus. He is a member of theStanding Committee of the European Science Foundation and a member ofthe Scientific Advisory Board of the European Social Survey. He has authoredand edited a number of books and numerous articles and organized severalinternational conferences and colloquia. He has also contributed to twoworld reports on media, culture, and communication (published by the Inter-national Institute of Communication in London) and was a discussant in themajor research project, ‘‘Our Creative Diversity: Report of the World onCulture and Development,’’ organized by UNESCO and published byEgoprim, France. His latest book, The Biopolitics of Totalitarianism: Essayson the Pathology of Capitalism, has been published by Taxideftis, Athens(2008).

Dr. Antonis Theocharous is a lecturer in the Department of Hotel andTourism Management in the Faculty of Economics and Management. Hereceived his Ph.D. in Business Administration from the University ofSunderland. At the European University Cyprus, he was assistant professorin the School of Business, coordinator of the under-=postgraduate programsin tourism and hospitality management, and director of the Research Center,for which he secured international recognition through several national,European, and international research grants. He is the national representativeof the Program Committee for Social Sciences and Humanities of the EU’s 7thFramework Program. He has also served as national coordinator for twoEuropean Strategy Forums on Research Infrastructures projects: the EuropeanSocial Survey and the Digital Research Infrastructure for the Arts and

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Humanities. His research focuses on links between political instability andtourism development. He has published in leading academic journals arti-cles on topics such as political instability and tourism development,cross-cultural examination of the impact of political instability on tourismdevelopment at the regional level, various models of tourism destinationchoice, and mass media depictions of various facets of political instability.

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