Public Sector Marketing in Australia:

Government departments and public sector organisations in Australia are utilising marketing concepts and techniques that originated in the private sector. This has been reported by reference to case studies. However, no systematic attempt to assess the implementation of marketing in the public sector has been reported. This article reports a survey of the use of marketing positions in the Australian public sector over the ten year period 1982-1991. It shows that public sector organisations with similar objectives to organisations in the economic environment of the private sector may well be implementing marketing oriented management. However, a significant and consistent difference is found in the use of marketing between those public sector organisations with a social and political orientation as opposed to those organisations with a commercial and/or economic orientation.