Packaging Government Ideas to Achieve Citizen Satisfaction and Loyalty : The CIS Model ( Creating , Informing , and Supporting )

In business, marketing an idea is an attempt to communicate a brand, product, or concept to the general public, by creating an effective message. How about politics? How could a government effectively communicate its “product” to citizens? Despite several studies, both in business and politics, attempting to examine how to market a message, no attention was given to propose a government's "idea packaging" that leads to citizen satisfaction and loyalty. In order to fill his gap, the researcher draws from the literature of marketing and strategic management and utilizes the resource-based view tool. Via correlation analysis, the study examines the relationship between specific factors (i.e., creating an idea, informing citizens about the idea, and supporting the idea) and citizen satisfaction and loyalty. Data were collected from one hundred and ten U.S. registered voters. According to the results, "Creating" an idea, "Informing" citizens about the idea, and "Supporting" the idea (CIS Model), have a statistical strong positive effect on citizen satisfaction and loyalty. Several implications can be drawn from this study's findings and interesting directions for future research are provided.


I. INTRODUCTION
Marketing identifies and satisfies customer needs. Political marketing identifies and satisfies voter/citizen needs. Packaging is a big part of marketing and an extension of branding; it is the process where companies enclose or protect their products for distribution and sale. How about politics? How politicians could "package" their ideas?
Despite several studies, both in business and politics, attempted to examine how to market a message, no attention was given to propose a government's "idea packaging" that leads to citizen satisfaction and loyalty.
Valuable work has accumulated in this relatively new field of marketing and management, however, more research is necessary to effectively address critical issues relevant to the topic. Political marketing, as a discipline it has to develop its own frameworks and models adopting those from the core marketing literature. One issue that warrants attention is the distinctive role of organizational capabilities (via the resource-based view tool) in developing a political marketing strategy.

A. Resource-Based View (Rbv)
The resource-based view model (RBV) is a basis for the competitive advantage of a firm and lies primarily in the application of a bundle of valuable tangible or intangible resources (and capabilities) at the firm's disposal [1]. Important research was carried out on political marketing via the use of the RBV tool [2]- [4] focusing on elected politicians' competitive advantage [5], [6] and governments' performance [7] (Table I).

B. Conceptual Model and Research Hypotheses
Voola and O'Cass (2010) [4], O' Cass (2009) [3], and Lynch, Baines, and Egan (2006) [2] discussed the role of specific resources and capabilities in the development of a political party's performance. More recently, Antoniades (2019) [5] and Antoniades and Haan (2018) [6] applied the RBV on the political marketing of politicians (as units), whereas Antoniades and Haan (2019) [7] applied the RBV on the political marketing of democratic governments. The abovementioned studies led this study to attempt to fill an important gap in the political marketing literature (Table I). The Antoniades and Haan study (2018) [6] became an example to build the questions of this study.

C. Research Gap
How could a democratic government effectively communicate its message to citizens? As indicated, despite the abovementioned studies made a significant contribution, both in theory and practice, no attention was given to propose a government's "idea packaging" that leads to citizen satisfaction and loyalty.  this study aims a) to examine specific factors that lead to citizen satisfaction and loyalty; b) to facilitate democratic governments and politicians to get to know how to "package" their idea, and, c) to open up opportunities for further research on "idea packaging". Using correlation analysis, this research examines the relationship between three important capabilities (i.e., Creating, Informing, and Supporting) and Citizen Satisfaction and Loyalty (Fig. 1).

II. RESEARCH METHODS
Data were collected from the USA, one of the major players of the international political arena. According to Statista (2016) [17], 157.6 million U.S. citizens were registered to vote in 2016; this number consisted of the population of the study. One thousand (1,000) email invitations were sent randomly via email to U.S. registered voters; 93 questionnaires were returned. Email lists were provided by AtSign.co (2018) [18]. A questionnaire link was designed with Survey Monkey (2018) [19] online software; Survey Monkey automatically exports data into an Excel spreadsheet. One hundred and ten (110) respondents consisted of the sample of this survey; participants were asked to answer voluntarily and anonymously. The survey took place between 9 September and 3 December 2018.
Respondents were asked to indicate their perception about each one of the proposed factors (i.e., creating, informing, and supporting) and about the degree of their satisfaction and loyalty to the U.S. government.
The questionnaire used a structured approach with closed statements. All variables were measured by seven-point Likert rating scales (1932) [20] ranging from 1 (Strongly Disagree) to 7 (Strongly Agree). The statistics used in this study were as follows: (a) the mean; (b) a reliability test; (c) Pearson (1895) [21] correlations to measure the linear relationship between the variables, and lastly, statistical hypothesis testing. The p-value is a number between 0 and 1 and interpreted in the following way: A small p-value (typically ≤ 0.05) indicates strong evidence against the null hypothesis. Table II (regression analysis) shows the statistical significance and influence of the three proposed independent variables (i.e., "Creating", "Informing", and "Supporting") on "Citizen Satisfaction and Loyalty" (dependent variable). According to Shortell (2001) [22], for this kind of studies, the interpretation of the coefficient is more difficult to measure. Thus, correlations above 0.4 are considered to be relatively strong; correlations between 0.2 and 0.4 are moderate, and those below 0.2 are considered weak. Statistical results are presented in Table III.

A. Reliability Test
A reliability test was conducted based on Cronbach's alpha (1951) [23] to measure the internal consistency of the questionnaire. A satisfactory level of reliability is 0.70 or greater [24]. This study's scales are considered valid and reliable since all the values were greater than 0.79 (Table II).

H1. There is a positive relationship between Creating an Idea and Citizen Satisfaction and Loyalty
The correlation value (0.67) shows a strong positive relationship between Creating an Idea and Citizen Satisfaction and Loyalty. The results are significant with a p-value of 0.008.

H2. There is a positive relationship between informing citizens about an Idea and Citizen Satisfaction and Loyalty
The correlation value (0.78) shows a strong positive relationship between Informing Citizens about an Idea and Citizen Satisfaction and Loyalty. The results are significant with a p-value of 0.001.

H3. There is a positive relationship between Supporting an idea and Citizen Satisfaction and Loyalty
The correlation value (0.77) shows a strong positive relationship between Supporting an Idea and Citizen Satisfaction and Loyalty. The results are significant with a p-value of 0.001.

IV. CONCLUSIONS, IMPLICATIONS, AND RECOMMENDATIONS
FOR FURTHER RESEARCH Creating an idea, informing citizens about the idea, and supporting the idea (CIS Model) have a strong positive impact on citizen satisfaction and loyalty. Not only in theory, but in practice also, CIS Model could help government officials, elected politicians, and political candidates realize that having an idea cannot stand alone; they need to adequately inform citizens about their idea, and mostly, they need to comprehensively support how their idea will benefit citizens. Only then will they achieve voter/citizen satisfaction and loyalty.
CIS Model (Fig. 2) not only facilitates democratic governments and politicians to "package" their idea but it also opens up opportunities for further research. New research could validate the preliminary results of this study using data obtained from each U.S. State or other democratic countries. CIS Model could also become a good basis for scholars to examine its impact on organizations, political parties, and politicians, with an aim to measure (customer or citizen/voter) satisfaction and loyalty, as well as, other outcomes (i.e., performance, reputation, and credibility).