Public sector marketing is about managing the relationships between government organizations, the public sector, and other parties that are seeking services from them.
These parties can include individuals, groups of individuals, organizations, or communities.
Development of public sector marketing
Marketing within the public sector is the result of developments in both marketing and public management.
Concept of marketing
As a concept, marketing can be construed in two different ways.
The managerial dimension, with focus on the tasks that an organization must fulfill in order to ensure long-term success with target groups. The functionality dimension, focusing on the notions of exchange and relationship as these occur between an organization and those individuals and groups who seek to satisfy their needs. In this sense, public sector marketing falls into the latter category of marketing.
Expanding the concept of marketing enables non-commercial aspects of exchanges to be taken into account, along with the reinforcement of the relational aspect of the exchange and the powerful development of marketing tools and techniques. These tools include systems for:
obtaining and handling information, cost-analysis communication distribution
These tools and concepts can be applied to the public sector either partially or occasionally.
Development of public administration models
Over the last 20 years, the notion of public administration and its management models have changed considerably. While developing its economic activities and services for citizens, the state has promoted the use of tools (notably marketing tools) from the private sector. At the same time, the growing autonomy of many administrative units (through the creation of agencies) has given them the chance to take a different approach from that of the traditional public administration model.
Hybrid management models, developed by these agencies, reflect the public nature of their organization while developing exchanges of a more commercial nature, above all by customizing the relationship with service beneficiaries. Given the ideas of New Public Management—and the fact that service quality is no longer measured by the authority but by the beneficiary—administrative units have been encouraged to take account of the relational aspects of the exchange, and apply the corresponding tools for measuring service quality and the satisfaction of beneficiaries.
Because of politically-defined requirements for public bodies to improve the quality of services and pay attention to citizens’ needs—as well as because governments have introduced competition to the provision of public services—these bodies face increasing uncertainty, which is exacerbated by their financing often partly depending on results. By using traditional marketing tools (e.g. better appreciating the needs and expectations of the beneficiaries of public action, detailing the content of the exchange (offer), improving communication about the offer, etc.) public bodies are able to reduce this uncertainty to some extent.
The public administration has to assume new roles, notably those involving social ties. Society needs to maintain—if not (re-)create—social links between its members given the destructuring of social ties, and their ‘virtualization’ through social networks such as Facebook or Twitter. Public management can play a key role here by promoting discussion, encouraging citizens’ participation, seeking to remain close and accessible to persons who are socially and physically isolated, etc. In such situations, and outside all form of exchange, relational elements are very important, and there are useful lessons to be learnt here from relational marketing.
Application of public sector marketing
For two main reasons it is not possible to determine whether marketing can really be applied to the public sector or not.
The public section is not a homogenous entity, as it includes both services of a commercial nature (hospitals, tourism, etc.) and activities involving constraints (corrections, taxation, etc.). Thus, some elements of the public sector are very close to the private sector, with the application of marketing tools posing no real problem (for example, postal services).
In some cases, the same public body may offer both freely available fixed price services, and at the same time oblige citizens to respect norms or stipulations. The police is a good example. The police may use force to inspect vehicles or stop drivers, arresting the latter if they break the law; yet who may also charge an event-organizer for their services in ensuring an event's safety.