Faith-based marketing

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Faith-based marketing is the integration of religious faith into marketing and business. [1] Such agencies specialize in marketing faith-based products and creating partnerships that target specific groups, such as the family-based audience. In the United States this type of marketing can help reach Christians, who enjoy an estimated purchasing power of over $5.1 trillion a year. [2] [3] Marketing research conducted by Nokia has shown that one of the most-desired features that adherent Muslims look for in cell phones is a Qibla finder that will orient them towards Mecca during prayer. [4] As the desire for religion-on-demand grows, more modern, technologically-advanced products are being designed to help believers maintain traditional religious practices. [5] Faith-based design allows companies to reach strong existing markets in new ways.

Contents

Market segments

Christian

The Timothy Plan offers mutual funds and exchange traded funds aimed at American evangelical Christians. Global X ETFs has two ETFs catered to Catholic investors.

Many Christian book and music titles have become successes in the mainstream world. [6] The best-selling Purpose Driven Life by Christian pastor Rick Warren became the bestselling hardback non-fiction book in history, and is the second most-translated book in the world, after the Bible. [7] In 2004, the Mel Gibson-directed The Passion of the Christ opened to $83.8M domestically and went on to gross $611M worldwide. [8] In 2014, the Christian films Son of God, Noah, Heaven Is for Real and God's Not Dead, enjoyed box-office success. [9] [10] Faith-based marketing is also seen in the tourism industry. The UN World Tourism Organization estimates that 300 million to 330 million people a year participate in faith-based travel.[ citation needed ] The U.S. Travel Association reports that 25% of all travelers are interested in a spiritual vacation. [11]

Many companies incorporate faith-based ideas in their operations, mission statements, or even their packaging, subtly or overtly. [12]

Islamic

See Islamic banking and finance, or the Dow Jones Islamic Fund for investing alighted with Islamic principles.

Judaism

With the rise of controversial anti-semitism in 2022 into 2023, [13] billboards to market and advertise Jewish teaching have been placed on display. In Los Angeles, California, between the intersections of Pico and Hauser Blvd until Venice and Lincoln Crossing, billboards featuring Jewish texts and teachings were placed to be visible by many drivers. The billboards were sponsored by the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles and in partnership with Outfront Media. The billboards signs were placed in December of 2022 in line with Hanukkah. [14]

Costs of faith-based marketing

Efforts to market or run a business based on religious faith can face unique challenges.

In 2012, Chick-fil-A, who has "made a name [for itself] promoting Christian principles in its charity work", drew controversy after its CEO Dan Cathy suggested that he opposed same-sex marriage, which led to protests. [15] Those protests did not appear to damage the company's sales. [16] Hobby Lobby, another Christian business, [17] filed a lawsuit, now styled Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby , arguing that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act's mandate for coverage of emergency contraception violated their First Amendment, religious rights. [18] Oral arguments were heard by the Supreme Court of the United States in March 2014.

Related Research Articles

In secular usage, religious education is the teaching of a particular religion and its varied aspects: its beliefs, doctrines, rituals, customs, rites, and personal roles. In Western and secular culture, religious education implies a type of education which is largely separate from academia, and which (generally) regards religious belief as a fundamental tenet and operating modality, as well as a prerequisite for attendance.

Proselytism is the policy of attempting to convert people's religious or political beliefs. Carrying out attempts to instill beliefs can be called proselytization.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chick-fil-A</span> American fast food restaurant chain

Chick-fil-A, Inc. is an American fast food restaurant chain and the largest chain specializing in chicken sandwiches. Headquartered in College Park, Georgia, Chick-fil-A operates 3,059 restaurants across 48 states, as well as in the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. The company also has operations in Canada, and previously had restaurants in the United Kingdom and South Africa. The restaurant has a breakfast menu, and a lunch and dinner menu. The chain also provides catering services.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hobby Lobby</span> American arts-and-crafts store chain based in Oklahoma

Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., formerly Hobby Lobby Creative Centers, is an American retail company. It owns a chain of arts and crafts stores with a volume of over $5 billion in 2018. The chain has 1,001 stores in 48 U.S. states. The Green family founded Hobby Lobby to express their Christian beliefs and the chain incorporates American conservative values and Christian media.

Religions are represented on the Internet in many ways. There are sites which attempt to cover all religions, traditions, and faiths, such as Patheos, Religious Tolerance, and Beliefnet. There are also sites that are specific to a religious tradition. Many sites are discussion groups, others host theological debates, and some provide advice concerning religious doctrine. Some sites aim to provide a religious experience facilitating prayer, meditation, or virtual pilgrimages. People also leverage search engines to investigate aspects of religion. Some religious websites are translated into several languages. For example, JW.ORG features content in over 1,000 languages.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Harvey Cox</span> American theologian (born 1929)

Harvey Gallagher Cox Jr. is an American theologian who served as the Hollis Professor of Divinity at Harvard Divinity School, until his retirement in October 2009. Cox's research and teaching focus on theological developments in world Christianity, including liberation theology and the role of Christianity in Latin America.

Becket, also known as the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, is a non-profit public interest law firm based in Washington, D.C., that describes its mission as "defending the freedom of religion of people of all faiths". Becket promotes accommodationism and is active in the judicial system, the media, and in education.

Kevin J. "Seamus" Hasson is Founder and President Emeritus of The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, a non-profit, public interest law firm that represents persons of all faiths. The Becket Fund is well known for successfully representing the Little Sisters of the Poor in the U.S. Supreme Court. The firm also successfully represented Hobby Lobby in Hobby Lobby v. Burwell, in which the Supreme Court held that protections under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act applied to closely held corporations. The Becket Fund also secured a victory in EEOC v. Hosanna Tabor, which the Wall Street Journal called one of "the most important religious liberty cases in half a century."

CNN Presents: God's Warriors is a three-part August 2007 CNN Presents documentary produced by Christiane Amanpour in which she examines the rise of religious fundamentalism as a political force in the world. The documentary was filmed in the United States, Europe and Middle East. It focuses on the three major monotheistic religions of the world, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

The terms internet church, online church, cyberchurch, and digital church refer to a wide variety of ways that Christian religious groups can use the internet to facilitate their religious activities, particularly prayer, discussion, preaching and worship services. The internet has become a site for religious experience which has raised questions related to ecclesiology.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mari religion</span> Ethnic religion of the Mari people

The Mari religion, also known as Mari paganism, is the ethnic religion of the Mari people, a Volga Finnic ethnic group based in the republic of Mari El, in Russia. The religion has undergone changes over time, particularly under the influence of neighbouring monotheisms. In the last few decades, while keeping its traditional features in the countryside, an organised Neopagan-kind revival has taken place.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joshua DuBois</span>

Joshua DuBois is an executive and former government official who served as the head of the Office of Faith Based and Neighborhood Partnerships in the Executive Office of the President of the United States from 2009 to 2013. In February 2013 he stepped down to write a book of devotionals based on the ones he sends Obama, start a consulting firm, and become the weekly religion and community solutions columnist for Newsweek and The Daily Beast. DuBois has been included among "The Root 100" and Ebony Magazine's "Power 150" lists of the most influential African Americans in the country. He also appeared on the cover of Christianity Today magazine as one of the 33 most influential Christian leaders under 33. In September 2017 it was announced that DuBois would become a CNN Contributor.

Religion and business have throughout history interacted in ways that relate to and affected one another, as well as influenced sociocultural evolution, political geographies, and labour laws. As businesses expand globally they seek new markets which leads to expanding their corporation's norms and rules to encompass the new locations norms which most often involve religious rules and terms.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David Silverman (activist)</span> American atheist activist

David Silverman is an American secular advocate.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chick-fil-A and LGBT people</span> History of Chick-fil-As relationship with the LGBTQ community

Issues arose between Chick-fil-A and the LGBT community in June 2012, after Dan T. Cathy, the fast food restaurant's chief executive officer, made a series of public comments opposing same-sex marriage. This followed reports that Chick-fil-A's charitable endeavor, the S. Truett Cathy-operated WinShape Foundation, had donated millions of dollars to organizations seen by LGBT activists as hostile to LGBT rights. Activists called for protests and boycotts, while supporters of the restaurant chain and opponents of same-sex marriage ate there in support of the restaurant. National political figures both for and against the actions spoke out and some business partners severed ties with the chain.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Museum of the Bible</span> History museum in Washington DC, United States

The Museum of the Bible is a museum in Washington D.C., owned by Museum of the Bible, Inc., a non-profit organization established in 2010 by the Green family. The museum documents the narrative, history, and impact of the Bible. It opened on November 17, 2017, and has 1,150 items in its permanent collection and 2,000 items on loan from other institutions and collections.

J. Shawn Landres is a social entrepreneur and independent scholar, and local civic leader, known for applied research related to charitable giving and faith-based social innovation and community development, as well as for innovation in government and civic engagement.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">State Religious Freedom Restoration Acts</span> 1993 state laws in the United States

State Religious Freedom Restoration Acts are state laws based on the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), a federal law that was passed almost unanimously by the U.S. Congress in 1993 and signed into law by President Bill Clinton. The laws mandate that religious liberty of individuals can only be limited by the "least restrictive means of furthering a compelling government interest". Originally, the federal law was intended to apply to federal, state, and local governments. In 1997, the U.S. Supreme Court in City of Boerne v. Flores held that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act only applies to the federal government but not states and other local municipalities within them. As a result, 21 states have passed their own RFRAs that apply to their individual state and local governments.

Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., 573 U.S. 682 (2014), is a landmark decision in United States corporate law by the United States Supreme Court allowing privately held for-profit corporations to be exempt from a regulation that its owners religiously object to, if there is a less restrictive means of furthering the law's interest, according to the provisions of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993. It is the first time that the Court has recognized a for-profit corporation's claim of religious belief, but it is limited to privately held corporations. The decision does not address whether such corporations are protected by the free exercise of religion clause of the First Amendment of the Constitution.

The secular movement refers to a social and political trend in the United States, beginning in the early years of the 20th century, with the founding of the American Association for the Advancement of Atheism in 1925 and the American Humanist Association in 1941, in which atheists, agnostics, secular humanists, freethinkers, and other nonreligious and nontheistic Americans have grown in both numbers and visibility. There has been a sharp increase in the number of Americans who identify as religiously unaffiliated, from under 10 percent in the 1990s to 20 percent in 2013. The trend is especially pronounced among young people, with about one in three Americans younger than 30 identifying as religiously unaffiliated, a figure that has nearly tripled since the 1990s.

References

  1. Hutchins, Bob; Stielstra, Greg (2009-04-06). Faith-Based Marketing: The Guide to Reaching 140 Million Christian Customers. John Wiley and Sons. ISBN   9780470483060 . Retrieved 2014-05-31.
  2. Liza Porteus Viana. "Faith-Based Marketing Can Tap Into Powerful Consumer Base | Fox Small Business Center". smallbusiness.foxbusiness.com. Retrieved 2014-04-06.
  3. The 2007 Leisure Market Research Handbook. (2007). Faith Based Activities, p. 180-183.
  4. Corbett, Sara (13 April 2008). "Can the Cellphone Help End Global Poverty?". New York Times Magazine.
  5. Gorman, Carma R. (2009). "Religion on Demand: Faith-based Design". Design and Culture. 1 (1).
  6. "The Great Christian Cash-In". TaipeiTimes. Retrieved 2014-04-07.
  7. "Short Takes: Gauging the impact of 'Purpose Driven Life,' 10 years on – CNN Belief Blog - CNN.com Blogs". religion.blogs.cnn.com. Retrieved 2014-04-06.
  8. "'Noah', 'Son of God' Part of Recent Hollywood Faith-Based Film Trend -- But Will It Last?". deadline.com. Retrieved 2014-04-06.
  9. "Why Christians Now Rule Hollywood - The Daily Beast". thedailybeast.com. Retrieved 2014-04-06.
  10. "Year of the faith films: Movies that tell stories of religion doing well at the box office - Washington Times". washingtontimes.com. Retrieved 2014-04-06.
  11. "Travel Market Report :: Login". travelmarketreport.com. Retrieved 2014-04-06.
  12. "9 religious companies (besides Chick-fil-A)". CNN. Archived from the original on 2014-02-05. Retrieved 2014-04-07.
  13. Boorstein, Michelle (January 12, 2023). "New survey finds antisemitic views are widespread in America". Washington Post. Retrieved January 15, 2023.
  14. Molina, Alejandra (January 6, 2023). "Jewish teachings greet Los Angeles drivers in billboard campaign". Religion News Service. Retrieved January 15, 2023.
  15. "Chick-fil-A: Will the controversy hurt chain's expansion plans? - CSMonitor.com". csmonitor.com. Retrieved 2014-04-06.
  16. Stafford, Leon (January 29, 2013). "Chick-fil-A keeps growing despite uproar". The Atlanta Journal-Constitution . Retrieved 2014-05-31.
  17. Hutchins, p. 207
  18. "Here's what you need to know about the Hobby Lobby case". washingtonpost.com. Retrieved 2014-04-06.

Further reading