Politics and MR

Three of the Indian states have just gone through the assembly elections and I was reading an article which was discussing how the perception of voters is about the different political parties in that states. The article talked about what people expect from the political parties when they are in power, which issue favours which political parties etc. Wait a sec; did I just say perception of political parties amongst voters!

So here comes the question; is there an opportunity to apply the concepts learn in MR to position 1 political party amongst each other on the perceptual space of the voters? Well there is but whether it can be applied in Indian scenario I am not sure. We have national brands and regional brands here (read national parties and regional parties).

The need satisfied is favourable economic environment, job opportunities, social security and availability of products and services at affordable rates. The need manifest into wants and here comes the problem, our votes want the candidate of their caste/religion. I do not think there is any confusion over the needs, they are universal but whereas those needs manifest into a want of suitable, educated, and eligible candidate in a developed world, in India those needs manifest into a want of candidate of own caste/religion irrespective of his professional and personal records at the nearest police station.

If I talk about getting a survey done to identify the current positioning gap in the voters perceptual space and then positioning a political party appropriately depending on which social or political issue is most able differentiate amongst all the parties. However, the question that should be answered first is whether there is a need to differentiate the political parties by using perceptual maps. In India the political parties are not competing on functional aspects but on trivial issues. The consumers (voters) are not evolved enough to evaluate the promise offered by these parties rationally and take a sound decision. Rather the political parties have made sure that the voters who vote remain in the lowest level of their maslows hierarchy of needs and do not look beyond the religion and poverty.

I feel that these politicos understand the management more than us, i.e. we always talk of moving the customers up the value ladder but the politico has rightly identified that the best way for their survival is customer remain in the most basic level of their needs and only look for the core product offering. So I think MR has its application in Politics but we do not require it in Indian scenario.