Although the State and its permanent representation, public administration, account for nearly half of GDP in the European Union, there is a surprising decline in research dealing with this sector in the management and marketing literature over the last 10 years. The objective of our manuscript is to show how theoretical perspectives, which have emerged in both marketing and public administration over the past few decades, have resulted in a visible and practically relevant convergence between these two disciplines that has previously only been discussed theoretically. We present the applications and limits of public marketing within this framework for the four classical marketing instruments (product development/improvement, price, promotion and place) to show that public marketing (i.e., the application of marketing concepts and tools to public administration) is already a reality in a wide variety of countries. Finally, we report the results of five qualitative in-depth interviews which we conducted with public administration agents from different sectors and countries. These interviews provide an empirical indication for our hypothesis that the historical evolution of the marketing discipline from a transaction- to a relationship-orientation as well as the trend towards “managerialism” in public administration, are likely to lead to an increasing importance of public marketing over the coming years.

Public marketing; Public administration; Social marketing; Public management; Public sector; Not-for-profit marketing