Introduction
Market-anchored power affairs coupled with all hindrances and facilitating systems that they present to consumers in search of change via consumer balloting are vital elements in comprehending the way power and politics function with respect to consumers. Certainly, power pressures in market arenas influence consumer balloting efficiency through influences on consumer dominance.
Therefore, the awareness of power and politics associations is vital to an enhanced comprehension of the way people operating as consumers could try to control and handle communal alarms for these activities are frequently expressed at the operations of marketing organisations (Peter and Olson 34).
This paper focuses on the theories by Foucault on power, governmentality, and expertise of the person as a lens to assess the consumption like a balloting occurrence. Foucault takes power to be relational, viz. “a fruitful network passing through social dealings” instead of “a depressing force aiming to inhibit or coerce”.
Power denotes a knowledge-associated universal force ground, which is applied, but not possessed by either people or organisations, and it materialises from communally and historically positioned relations. The concept of power by Foucault disputes many of the suppositions underlying ideas of endued consumers balloting in liberal marketplaces, and it enhances the comprehension of power concepts in consumer study and marketing administration.
Via an examination of market anchored power dealings, this paper essentially explores consumption as balloting symbol and adds to the comprehension of consumer opposition and preference by conveying market-anchored political undertaking to the forefront. Residents have begun employing their ballots in the market as a way of articulating their issues due to a loss of confidence in government and politics to tackle difficulties emanating from international capitalism.
This trend is an optional kind of lively resident not forced politically from above or via involvement with official political establishments, but by taking action through the market (Peng and Hackley 171).
Therefore, the assessments of consumer balloting are applicable to socially accountable marketing for the associated citizens, performing in their duty as consumers, are searching for ways to voice, and tackle issues on an array of concerns applicable to communal and personal wellbeing.
Consumer preferences aimed at tackling alarms of communal and personal distress in association with consumption stand out as consumer ballots.
Consumption anchored balloting can be observed in the established marketplaces for products and services with clear pro-societal programmes. Nevertheless, it is vital to consider that the quarters receptive to such alarms remain insignificant, and many regions of consumer balloting are typified by a shortage of efficient classification and accessibility of options.
This aspect enquires on the stability of power in market connections, as businesses still manage all that is accessible to consumers. Nonetheless, many people have inquired on consumer balloting since it aims at taking up the market network and business rooms that are considered very challenging.
Policymakers have been blaming consumption for environmental difficulties, unjust trade ways, and individual and animal wellbeing concerns, with a rising number of conditions underscoring where the triumphant marketing operations of personal businesses destructively influence consumers, community, or other stakeholders in an expected style.
Whereas businesses could have deemed the monetary advantages to the establishment, the advantages, and charges, not all those engaged in the broader exchange practice might have been completely recognised. For instance, consumers are now in a position to select a huge quantity of untested goods grown external to their nation (Newman and Brandon 803).
Even if this aspect raises autonomy of selection for their plates and generates employment and markets for products in developed nations, it does not essentially boost human rights for the producers and employees who generate those products and as well supplies destructively to carbon emissions.
Therefore, responses to the implementation of the mainstreaming of trade goods indicate that these implementations allocate a lot power in the hands of leading market performers instead of efficiently enhancing sustainable transformation.
In fact, for consumers balloting to be manageable, people are required to connect with the marketplace, be it via typical or optional exchange of rooms that have the potential to establish paradoxical selection conditions. Therefore, the application of power and politics through market votes has to be assessed more strongly.
Clarity of research objectives
This paper will discover the way that ideas of power and politics play their role in the context with consumers. Even though the concentration will be on conceptualising the power and politics of consumers, it is vital to note that there are different terminologies that are used in discussion concerning the power and politics of consumers.
Some of the terminologies applicable include meticulous commerce, political consumerism, and ethical consumption. It is very important to bear in mind that in this report, the consumers discussed refer to customers from developing and developed countries. A literature review on the power and politics of consumers will develop a point of discourse for this report.
This paper will offer a case study of power and politics of consumers by way of reference to the Fair Trade Coffee. After that, the power and politics of consumers and its associated ideas will be evaluated and contextualised. More weight will be placed on techniques that are at the disposition of political consumers, for instance, buycott policies (Newman and Brandon 805).
This paper will place the political consumer in the power associations amongst representatives that have the prospective power to bring about norm change. These performers encompass activists and organisations. Lastly, this paper will compare the dynamics involving these performers with the new norm dynamics while underscoring the function of the political consumer.
Literature Review
The elements of power and politics carry out their task with respect to consumers in that they symbolise a possibility for direct involvement with residents, which would not be achievable through traditional political systems. In fact, intellectuals progressively take consumption to be political.
Consumer voting (balloting) thus denotes activities carried out by residents in their responsibility as consumers in reaction to certain features of the market system taken to be unsuitable or unjust. In this regard, both green consumption and ethical consumption are seen as consumer voting via utilising the market as a location for political practices.
Green consumption refers to consumers’ conduct that is mostly propelled by environmental inclinations and their efforts to decrease or restrict their ecological footsteps. On its part, ethical consumption denotes buying and consumption that considers communal and animal well being in addition to environmental alarms. In the 12th century, studies proposed that the marketplace is social equality where each currency offers the right to cast a vote (Newman and Brandon 806).
In this regard, the perception of consumers employing their purchases like votes denotes a long-approved symbol that while not well researched keeps on being supported nowadays. When individuals get detached from politics or fail to believe that they possess a political tone, they utilise the market like a location for articulation and accomplishment.
The most successful manner of exercising power and politics in the modern era is not to ballot in an election, but to practice it at the market and shops. As governments fluttered concerning Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs), markets, after encountering consumer alarm, removed these GMOs from their shelves.
Currently, as governments fail to convince consumers on efforts to deal with the concerns of an international financial system, recent instances of boycotting demonstrate the force enforced by consumers directly on businesses to change their corporate conduct.
Possibly, the augmented access and expediency of ethical options has brought about a great influence on the costs of such goods in the contemporary era and a United Kingdom magazine supported such market-anchored balloting.
Therefore, even as consumption as balloting has been a long-established symbol, an argument of what this perception in reality necessitates has been disregarded. The presence of consumer balloting as this paper underscores demonstrates activities carried out by residents, in their capacity as consumers, in reaction to personal or communal alarms (Newman and Brandon 817).
These activities normally reveal alarms for the overall excellence instead of just individual benefit and these alarms are political, ecological, communal, and animal well being alarms. Power and politics exercised by consumers could engage acceptance or rejection of a given business or goods is decisive and entails meticulous notion and calculated activity.
For instance, some local shops in the United Kingdom encourage individuals to purchase goods from shops instead of supermarkets in a bid to reduce green house gases and prevent shops from being abandoned due to consumers progressively shifting to purchase their goods from supermarkets. This perception of empowered consumers denotes a transfer of power from businesses to consumers.
The exercise of power and politics by consumers proposes that the marketplace is ready to pay attention, and react to absolute consumer requirements. In fact, supermarkets in the UK propagate this posture. Prior to a research carried out by the government of the United Kingdom concerning the same, there was an emerging notion that consumption strategy must be propelled by clients for it to be effective.
The research revealed that it is the responsibility of consumers to control the United Kingdom’s food strategy programme instead of the government, traders, or manufacturers (Peng and Hackley 172).
However, the involvement with the market structure as a way of customer selection poses vital questions concerning the efficiency of political consumerist attitude to communal adjustment under marketplace situations. This assertion is especially evident where the customer dominion is vital, but tentative as a way through which people can indicate their choice for change.
Power and politics in the context with consumers
The power of consumers could be described as a market situation where customers possess the direct authority to determine the products that will be manufactured and consumed. This element sequentially brings about the betterment of customer welfare and supports the affirmation that consumers are right at all times in addition to being the king.
The concept of power and politics of consumers found its way through the enlightenment and expression politics and power of consumers was originally employed at around 1930. Different researchers were convinced that the application of the expression politics promoted its broader utilisation in the early times.
However, some arguments hold that the improvement of the market study techniques offered the critical setting for the swift augment to distinction of a concept, which holds that consumers have authority over what is traded through their power of votes. In line with studies, the power of consumers is similar to political dominance practiced through voting and enhanced by competitive situations in marketplaces that control that selection (Peng and Hackley 174).
On the contrary, some researchers attempted to restrict the perception to the fiscal authority applied by individual customers by their spending in the marketplace, and situated it as a perfect moral value as well as an optional way to have an effect on the economic process.
Different intellectuals claim that when power spreads to every social sphere, community does not improve in accordance with the concerns of the ruling elite groups, tyrannical traditional values, or blind opportunity. However, these intellectuals hold that such improvements occur in line with the cognisance effort of everyone towards shaping one’s planet in the resemblance of their shared requirements and aspirations, which is reliant on the limitations of the accessible information and property.
Likewise, some researches vividly articulate their conviction in consumer power and they hold that politics and the subsequent influence are constructive aspects although the inclinations of consumers are jumbled or unpredictable (Peng and Hackley 177).
There are suggestions that the elements power and politics of consumers are at the centre of deliberations at the marketplace and that unconstructive consumer votes like boycotts reveal the practice of power and politics posed to detrimental business practices. Nevertheless, the flaw of the power and politics as exercised by consumers has as well been discussed.
For instance, here are affirmations that power ad politics of consumers have led to the legitimisation of particular sectors that are under inspection for their unconstructive influence on customers’ social wellbeing. In addition, arguments by scholars articulate that since marketing communication and exercise are closely associated with the thought of power and politics of consumers, the quest of the marketing directors concerning the concerns of their businesses are changed to customer advantages.
Moreover, customer advantages are believed to eliminate the aspects of personal accountability from that equation and thus they bring about impracticable convictions concerning marketplaces.
Additionally, the power of consumers is reliant on market competition that is normally not ideal and has to be advanced through permitting market configurations encouraged by policymakers. Some studies stress that the power of consumers is far-off from completely being attained even where suitable institutions have totally been established.
In fact, the power of consumers differs from the power of citizens since the consumer is merely a single phase of the life of a person. In a number of sectors of the financial systems, the control of consumers is somewhat restricted and thus the significance of legislation in rectifying marketplace defects that hamper the wellbeing of consumers takes dominion (Peng and Hackley 178).
The majority of the gains related to the power of consumers are not restricted to it and even though power and politics of consumers trigger economic assumption and is nearly unanimously adopted, experimental data backing it is limited. The power and politics of consumers propose that the desires of customers are the focal points upon which businesses shape their provisions, when in reality supremacy over the facts could develop with time and in accordance with marketing situations.
Similar to the power of consumers, consumption as balloting holds that the marketplace situations will react to the votes of customers. Consumer demand is apparently significant to businesses and it offers a foundation upon which they settle on what to manufacture.
The viewpoint of the customer is just one of the deliberations of a business, and in due course businesses will provide what is in their best concern. In assessing the concentrations of different policymakers, businesses consider intricate intersecting systems of trades amid such groups.
In the course of their transactions, businesses could miscalculate or disregard the consequence of their conduct on other parties and the surroundings due to self-interest or might lack the market methods that are available and accessible to manage the unidentified effect. Therefore, whereas the anticipation is of constructive planned results, there as well arise unconstructive unplanned results of marketing actions on some policymakers, which a business could decide to overlook or tackle when encountering unconstructive consumer voting.
Arguments on the power of consumers are as well anchored in the supposition that customers possess the ideal measure and kind of information to present such excellent selections (Peng and Hackley 181). In reality, social reviewers have revealed the insincerity contained in a time of maximal selection where the selections are efficiently outlined and administered by the marketplace.
Even if politicians have assumed the outstanding advantage of selection, critics have suggested that a great difficulty of selection is the detection of ameliorated desires and suggests that consumers do not at all times make the selections that maximise their wellbeing though that remains to be their selection.
Of late, there have been submissions that the advantages related to the offering of selection could be restricted to concerns where judgment difficulty is controllable. It is deceptive to propose that consumers are ready or capable of carrying out the types of intricate trade-offs necessary to attain a maximal scope of selection attributes throughout the marketplace contributions.
Consumers who frequently make use of undemanding selection practices are uncertain on what particular attributes could entail for them, and are not ready or capable of learning more aspects concerning the attributes in a bid to arrive at an excellent selection. When encountering selection difficulty, it is just a few of consumers that choose many options, which is attributable to inconsistency of development suggesting that existence has turned out to be quicker, more demanding, and very difficult (Peng and Hackley 182).
There is an inherent supposition that consumers are tasteful enough to arrive at suitable market selections and thus vote. Nevertheless, even consumers having powerful resolution expertise could fail to contribute comprehensively in amassing information concerning a product due to time checks. In addition, even individuals could have a sense of empowerment and accountability for environmental concerns at a personal level, which entails insecurities of failing to know the excellent selections.
Inquiring on the influential manner in which consumers are anticipated to adjust their consumer selections with regard to green consumption, researchers propose that consumer selections like those are bound by a framework of general threats, and the qualms brought about by competing specialists and lay understanding with regard to such threats.
Even if green consumption is significant in determining and sustaining powerful green identities and enviable sustainability results, there are uncertainties concerning the selections to be carried out from a consumer viewpoint. Moreover, even if selection and selecting could be vital to successful voting, many selections could be unfavourable and possibly paralysing the degree of necessary knowledge processing, which turns out to be irresistible thus possibly bringing about a situation of doubt and deadlock.
Consumers that are more probable of being empowered by selection are normally the rich ones and normally not from the low social levels (Peng and Hackley 186).
This aspect raises a factor of social elitism associated with the intricacy of selection and consumer voting, and it underscores the elimination of the minority susceptible and less-evolved consumer groups from the knowledgeable community and selection.
Therefore, selection editing stands out as the key to selection creation as well as perplexity surrounding sustainable products; for instance, in some situations, consumers look upon the traders to manage the selections that they encounter.
A different harmonising suggestion is the permitting of ethical rooms that could lead to consumers being ethical by design. This element brings about the consideration of consumption as a novel vector for administering community by controlling the selections of people in their daily dedications to friends, relatives, and society.
Consequently, this move leads to the questioning of the idea of consumer power and politics. In fact, different researchers have taken consumer power and politics as a myth. Moreover, this aspect as well stresses on many situations and thereby makes the discussions on the power and politics of consumers difficult from the viewpoint of consumer voting.
In overstating the power and politics of consumers over businesses, studies have suggested that discussions on sovereignty depoliticise customer operation and votes (Peng and Hackley 176). The move to citizen accountability as personal selector is even greater with regard to criticism proposing that activities of consumer voting are just a way of further revitalising the very networks that they are intended to question. Consumers might think of rejecting philistinism as well as other features of capitalism, but not the network in full. Therefore, whereas selection could free consumer votes, it could be as well a difficult and possibly a restricting exercise. These restrictions are included in the sections of selection, knowledge, personal riches, and influenced by ambiguity in addition to personal and shared responsibility. Selection is vital to consumer voting and it encompasses access to knowledge, riches, and market accessibility.
Methodology
This report will be qualitative in form and it will be both descriptive and explanatory. To start with, this study will explain and conceptualise the occurrence of power and politics of consumers and the hypothetical structure of development. A case study will assist in demonstrating the power and politics of consumers in the process and its present location in the development of norms.
This report will afterwards offer the probable reasons behind the aspects of power and politics of consumers, which have gone through the norm development without getting to norm incorporation. The analysis will mostly employ secondary sources and primary sources when need be. The primary sources that will be consulted encompass strategy documents from activists and organisations that are engaged in pushing for change through political consumerism.
This report adopts a case study concerning Fair Trade with coffee as the trade commodity (Newman and Brandon 810). The choice of this case study was aimed at offering awareness into the operations of the “buycott” policy, which is expected to be applied by the practical activist that has high conviction in cooperation and awarding individuals that comply.
In a buycott, there are attempts by consumers to persuade shoppers to purchase the goods of chosen companies in a bid to award these companies for conduct that is in line with the intentions of the activists. On the contrary, a boycott is aimed at reprimanding businesses for misconduct where consumers deliberately choose not to buy given goods from another business or label. Additionally, the case study provided in this paper covers several concerns of social fairness.
The case study presents the concerns of empowerment in the course of trade in addition to concerns associated with human security (Newman and Brandon 812). Nevertheless, the case study tackles norms associated with trade, and what trade must deal with coupled with what trade must not deal with.
The endeavours of the activists concerning this case study seek to create new tags, documentation designs, and commands into capitalist creation and business operations. Tags like “fair trade”, accord consumers the chance to classify themselves with novel schemes that would bring about normal reception and finally conduct change.
The choice of the case study method is related to qualitative techniques of examination. The choice of the case study technique as applied in this report would permit the researcher to carry out a detailed study of the case, which is opposed to cross-case study technique that does not provide a researcher with the time necessary to carry out a detailed study of the cases.
Nevertheless, a cross-case study technique could permit the researcher to acquire more substantiation to justify a given trend. This report has chosen the case study technique for it seeks to recognise the dissimilar levels and practices of power and politics of consumers by using the norm development structure to a consumer movement (Newman and Brandon 815).
This report does not intend to recognise wide-ranging trends, but to test the practicability of positioning power and politics of consumers in the normal development. In a bid to make this move possible, a detailed study of a case is vital in the attempt to take out every phase of political consumerism in the norm development.
The methodological significance of the case study is still extremely surmise and draws attention to different criticisms of the case study technique. The criticisms encompass prejudiced choice of cases, weak practical control that emanate from a lot of inconsistencies and a small number of cases, the skewed ends that are frequently generated from case studies, and non- retroflexibility.
Nonetheless, this report is not intended to create a hypothesis, but instead to analyse a hypothesis, viz. whether there is a position for power and politics of consumers in the norm development. In this regard, consumer movements were chosen as tests for the structure that when found efficient would in reality be duplicated with the application of case studies.
The case study in this report will be examined in the theoretical structure of constructivism, and more particularly in the circumstance of norm forces (Newman and Brandon 817).
The case study will demonstrate the performers engaged in the practice of structuring and creating fresh norms that repudiate existing norms in the field of the international marketplace and the capitalist global financial system. Despite the fact that the research on global norms would concentrate on country or non-country performers, this paper will concentrate on the function of non-country performers in the global norm formation.
Activists are the norm formers or norm enterprisers, while consumers represent the performers that shape the prospective medium to attain norm incorporation. Lastly, the achievements and malfunctions of the persuasion policies employed by these performers will be clearly discussed without introducing any fresh constituents to the report.
Appropriateness of analysis techniques for objectives
The power and politics will be examined from a constructivist viewpoint, by highlighting the function undertaken by norms, and with respect to the scheme of a norm development. These analysis techniques for objectives are suitable as constructivism is associated with the association between instruments and configurations, which underscore perfect associations in assessing political consumerism for different instruments (for instance, consumers, organisations and activists) connect with the capitalist configuration (Bennett 22).
In the attempt to enable intellectuals to create substantive allegations from the constructivist advance, they should outline the major performers, their characteristics, their concerns, their cultural backgrounds and social competencies, and the manner in which they formulate their social actuality and control normative configurations and notions.
The New Social Movement (NSM) theory plays a key role in linking political consumerism with constructivism. The New Social Movement theory may be observed like a constituent of social constructivism that explains shared responsibility by highlighting the duty of structuring activities and cultural practices in societal activism.
Clarity in reporting results
The reporting of the results of this report is two-fold. On a wider scale, the results of the case study are reported in a manner that determines the degree to which activists, via the political consumers, are taking part in creating global norm adjustment. The study as well reports on the way and the extent at which the level of norm changes prevails in a multinational ground, rather than the global national-system.
This reporting is clear, as it will delineate the likelihoods and restrictions of political consumerism in generation of a norm change. On a narrower scale, the reporting of results seeks to reveal difficulties that the activists are encountering in rallying customers, best practices recognised from the case study, in addition to proposed persuasion policies that norm enterprisers could employ in seeking their programmes.
This reporting is important and clear for the results thereof can be employed as a suggestion or realistic directives for activists that are involving consumers and multinational corporations. Moreover, this study informs readers of the prospective power they possess as consumers and the alleged accountability that they have in addition to their exposure to the constructive or unconstructive manoeuvring by activists.
Discussion of Results
The Fair Trade Movement would be conceived as a non-profit, multinational support system. The expression “Fair trade” became outstanding due to the efforts by Alternative Trade Organisations as well as Non-Governmental Organisations. This expression highlights the injustices of the present trade establishment.
The development of the Fair Trade Movement can be described in three phases (Bennett 31). The initial phase involved the concept of benevolent trading where goods are traded anchored in societal cohesion. The second part is the commercialisation point where the goods are branded and marketed through optional channels, in addition to the ordinary marketing. In the third phase, the chief roasters, reputable coffee tags, and traders form associations with the underprivileged farmers.
After fuel products, coffee comes in as the next largely traded commodity. An unstable coffee market and inconsistent prices have thus an international effect on different stakeholders (that is, farmers, traders, and consumers). The thrust for the formation (support) of Fair Trade coffee is mainly due to the collapse of the global coffee agreement.
An accord was made to deal with the price fluctuations in the coffee marketplace, but was later broken up. The Association of Coffee Producing Countries (ACPC) suggested a withholding arrangement with the intention of persuading the coffee producers to hold back the availing of their coffee produce into the global market. This action was intended to manage coffee prices through the regulation of supply (Bennett 32).
Nevertheless, these attempts failed to bear fruits and the ACPC split in 2002. With respect to the ineffectuality of the grand endeavours, the final alternative was to employ consumers to apply their power and politics tactically to manage the market. The Cafedirect kind of coffee was produced by some British Alternative Trade Organisations that encompassed Equal Exchange and Oxfam Trading just to mention a few.
The production of the Cafedirect was supported by the downfall of global accords on coffee. The identity offered to Cafedirect is a standard sized corporation even if it was taken to be a Non-Governmental Organisation by some individuals. Cafedirect operates with over 40 producer organisations in over 15 third world nations. Moreover, the group helps over 250,000 farmers and their societies.
Fair Trade organisations in the fight for the betterment of conditions surrounding coffee have been in a position to change coffee from a wearisome bulk product to a stylish specialty item for consumption that is pre-wrapped with lifestyle descriptors. Consumers are persuaded to buy more than merely coffee as they are compelled to take up the notion of a fairer planet.
In line with an assessment of Fair Trade ads carried out on coffee, it was revealed that consumers were encouraged to buy the coffee, as it would permit them to discern adventure in the unidentified lands of the underprivileged producers (Bennett 39). This move ultimately pleased the cultural capital of the empowered international consumers.
The activists of Fair Trade have been in a position to draw a number of consumers by employing the technique of promoting Fair Trade in a colourful way by pulling the interest of consumers by the use of far-off lands and alien culture. The activists incorporate goods with the knowledge concerning individuals and locations that are engaged in the generation of Fair Trade invention.
Conclusion
The application of power and politics by consumers highlights the fact that the marketplace is ready to listen and react to absolute consumer demands. The power of consumers might be depicted as a market circumstance where customers hold the direct ability to settle on the products that will be manufactured and consumed (Peter and Olson 104).
This aspect causes the betterment of customer welfare and supports the declaration that consumers are correct at all times in addition to being the rulers. The case study in this paper has offered a signal of the position of the norm development. Activists have been encouraging consumers to take up the notion of Fair Trade and thus leading to a consistent rise in sales. Therefore, the conducts of ethical consumerism have been adapted to a considerable degree.
Nevertheless, it is significant to note that all these attempts sought to convince consumers and this point is where the concept of power and politics play their role in the context with consumers. The approvals of the persuasions by the consumers remain paramount and they can fade away should the customers’ tendency decline.
A number of corporations engaged in the coffee sector have understood and taken up the advantages of purchasing into the new Fair Trade norm, and is only taking place in reaction to consumers.
The success of the efforts by the activists of the Fair Trade is hindered by the failure of harmonisation amongst activists, tagging organisations, and documentation systems, in addition to competing objectives and ideas. For a more effective undertaking, activists should restructure their persuasion policies in a bid to boost and empower significant mass for an excellent and lasting response.
Recommendations
- Fair trade activists should employ an advance that incorporates trade and social advertising for them to boost the consumption of coffee. It is significant to underscore both the quality and the societal concerns of the produce. In this regard, the activists should apply the capitalist technique in addition to traditional consumer conduct to bring up new models in consumption.
- Another hurdle for Fair Trade activists is arriving at an extensive public, instead of only the ones that are vulnerable to the notion of ethical consumerism. In this regard, the traders of Fair Trade must shift Fair Trade ideals past niche marketplaces to the mass marketplaces with the aim of changing the environment of the mass marketplace.
Works Cited
Bennett, Lance. “The Personalisation of Politics Political Identity, Social Media, and Changing Patterns of Participation.” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 644.1 (2012): 20-39. Print.
Newman, Benjaminm, and Bartels Brandon. “Politics at the checkout line: Explaining political consumerism in the United States.” Political Research Quarterly 64.4 (2011): 803-817. Print.
Peng, Norman, and Chris Hackley. “Are voters, consumers: A qualitative exploration of the voter-consumer analogy in political marketing.” Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal 12.2 (2009): 171-186. Print.
Peter, Paul, and Jerry Olson. Consumer Behaviour & Marketing Strategy, New York: McGraw-Hill Irwin, 2010. Print.