The concept of populism has already been described and explained by many authors in the field of political science. It is usually defined as full or thin-centered ideology, usual rhetoric tool, political style or strategy etc.
In this paper we choose a sort of another academic approach and consider about advantages or disadvantages of populism in the context of its use in electoral marketing. Primarily, we perceive the phenomenon of populism as a marketing tool, which is currently used more or less by many political parties around the world.
Populism can help them to mobilize undecided and disgruntled segments of voters successfully and increase the number of votes for the party in the election. It is oriented, similarly as electoral marketing, on short-term election results.
In marketing terminology, it is a typical catch-all strategy of undifferentiated targeting in the electoral market, dominantly influenced by internal character (identity) and election goals of each political party with respect to its historical, personal and ideological roots and habits. We claim that populism can be use also as a helpful strategic tool for market segmentation of voters and making different market position of the party between other competitive political actors.
The paper also illustrates different roles of populism in campaigns of various political parties from the last Czech parliamentary elections in 2010 and 2013, with an emphasis on three protest parties - Public Affairs, ANO 2011 and Tomio Okamura's Dawn of Direct Democracy.