Abstract
The political marketing academic literature is largely an Anglo-Saxon one, with the main European contributions coming from Ireland and the UK. Comparatively little has been written explicitly about political marketing in Sweden. We offer a brief overview of the key characteristics of the Swedish political system, together with a commentary on the apparent use of political marketing in Sweden drawing upon concepts developed in the American and British literature. We present the results of a study of perceptions of political marketing in local elections in Norrkoping, a middle-sized Swedish town of 90,000. Firstly a series of structured interviews were carried out with the party leaders of the 5 largest parties and with the journalists who report local politics in the town. These included questions aimed at establishing their level of understanding of political marketing. Secondly, two focus groups were carried out with voters in the town, which included an exploration of their experience and perceptions of electoral campaigns.