The Pattern of People's Voting Behavior in Iran Based on Political Marketing Approach

The main task of marketing managers is the discovery of customer's needs and analysis of their purchasing behavior and the ranking of influencing factors on these. The result of this effort is to identify the tastes of the market and provide the appropriate goods or services, or to gain more market share. The Political parties, in the same manner, need to understand the individual and public needs so that they could obtain a correct analysis of the electorate's conduct and inclinations towards certain political trends and use it in their election campaigns. Therefore, the major task of political marketing is the analysis of people's voting behavior, a task which is referred to as the basic strategies of political campaigns. The purpose of this research, an interdisciplinary one, is using the political marketing approach to explain the reasons behind people's backing a certain candidate. To do this, we have first reviewed the theoretical foundations of voting behavior and political marketing, and then we have identified and categorized the factors influencing the voting behavior of the Iranian people by using the mixed method, and finally we have ranked these factors. The result of the research is the introduction of three major shaping factors behind people's voting behavior, namely the candidate, the voter and the competitive environment, each of which has three sub-components and 36 indicators.