| This is a qualitative case study of a Southern Californian school district's attempt to pass a general obligation bond using marketing as the theoretical framework of analysis. Data were collected through observation, interview and review of documents with participant-observer as the researcher's role. All names of people and places were masked and data were collected for a seven-month period. For a basis of comparison, a composite ideal-type marketing process was developed using the Hanson-Henry (1993) model. The studied bond election was then compared to the ideal type model. The study found that the district's use of marketing was initiated by a bond election consultant and the marketing was done in a generic symbolic manner with little use of data to inform decisions on campaign strategies. This caused a significant loss of resources (money, people and time) for the district. The study further found that external forces such as patriotism and civic duty were important factors in determining the outcome of the elections and these factors superseded marketing efforts. These factors coupled with the long term relationship that the community had developed with the district made bond passage inevitable. This finding suggests that marketing as Kotler (1996) defines it as efforts “to bring about voluntary exchanges of values with target markets to achieve institutional objectives” (p. 6) does not capture the process used in this bond election and that relationship marketing that focuses on “mutually satisfying long term relationships” (Buttle p. l, 1996) might offer a better explanation of school-community interaction and communication in a general obligation bond election. |
