Religions as brands? Religion and spirituality in consumer society

Abstract

This article gives an interdisciplinary account of the societal causes as well as individual and organizational effects of religious consumer society. It integrates and systematizes contributions from economics of religion, marketing, and sociology of religion. The article presents the causes of religious consumer society and the most frequent individual adaptations (quality expectations, religious shopping, syncretism) and organizational responses (marketing and branding strategies). Findings are that (1) in the religious consumer society, individuals are free not to be religious or spiritual, putting religious associations in competition with secular organizations, and possibly leading to secularization, (2) it is exaggerated to speak of shopping and consuming as the “new religions” of Western societies, and (3) religious marketing and branding face important limitations, some internal and some external to religious and spiritual organizations, due to the dilemma between marketing practices and transcendental claims. We suggest ways and means to solve this dilemma.

Keywords:

• Secularization
• marketing
• branding
• transcendence
• religiosity

Notes

1. A transcendent reality is a superempirical (or “higher” or “ultimately real”) plane which cannot be directly controlled by humans but which is thought to be influencing the lives of men in some way or other. The transcendent reality may be seen as anthropomorphic (including spirits, gods) or not (superempirical laws or states of beings). Symbols are objects, actions or elements of communication that refer to something other than themselves. They consist of a “signifiant” and a “signifié”. Problems of meaning and contingencies are situations individuals or groups find themselves in, in which things are not how they should be or how they are normally (success, disappointment, catastrophe, positive or negative surprises, malady, death of a near one), thus leading to (a) the question of “why” things have happened in this way and (b) the motivation of influencing such situations with out-of-the-ordinary means. Salvation goods are both the ends that individuals seek with their religious practices and the means to reach them. These ends and means may themselves be transcendent or immanent (e.g., eternal life, illumination as transcendent ends; richness, social status as immanent ends). From the perspective of suppliers, the “salvation goods” that organizations actually offer are only very rarely physical objects, but mostly services (a pastoral counseling session) and collective activities (a ritual).

2. Note how our definitions are linked: the definitions of cultural-level spirituality, religiosity, individual spirituality, and religious organization all refer to our general definition of religion.

3. While most authors would probably agree with some kind of story of a modernization process leading to the religious consumer society, there is a debate as to when it happened. Some scholars (us included) think that the major turning point was the 1960s (Brown 2001; McLeod 2007), while other scholars believe that the important change came about only in the 1980s (Gauthier, Martikainen, and Woodhead 2011). Compare our description also to postmodernist views on consumer culture (Firat and Venkatesh 1995).

4. See for a general overview and assessments: Warner (1993), De Graaf (2013). See for a critical view Bruce (1999). The mainstream version of the rational choice approach to religion has been strongly challenged on empirical grounds. See: Chaves and Gorski (2001) and Voas, Olson, and Crockett (2002).

5. In this way, some of the differences between the USA and most European states can be (partly) explained. In the US, with its strong legal separation of church and state, there has nevertheless been a strong societal expectation that individuals should be “religious” and a generally held belief that religion is a “good thing” even after the 1960s (Lipset 1991). In such a situation, religious freedom will lead to a religious market. In many European countries, after the 1960s, individuals were not expected to be religious anymore. The result was, therefore, more fuzzy fidelity and secularism. Other variables that strongly influence the reactions of individuals to religious freedom are gender, age, religious socialization, religious tradition and the level of development of their country of residence (Norris and Inglehart 2004; Ruiter and De Graaf 2006).

6. Shachar et al. (2011) provide one of the few articles that use experimental evidence in order to argue that “religiosity and brand reliance are negatively related, at least in part, because both allow individuals to express aspects of themselves to others.”.

7. Belk, Wallendorf, and Sherry (1989) already acknowledge this in their article.

8. Here are some phenomena that have in fact been written about as “implicit religion” or “quasi religion”: sports, pop music, television, sex, one’s own home, art, psychotherapy, mindfulness, self-help groups, medicine, vegetarianism, science (Brinkerhoff and Jacob 1999; Lam 2001).

9. In the (few) cases where this has been done, several hypotheses of the proponents of this line of argument have been falsified. Thus, there does not seem to be a trend towards “believing without belonging” or “vicarious religion” (Bruce and Voas 2010; Voas and Crockett 2005). Nor can we speak of a “spiritual revolution” in western societies (Flanagan and Jupp 2007).

10. In Mac devotees’ communities, (Belk and Tumbat 2005, 205) find “a creation myth, a messianic myth, a satanic myth, and a resurrection myth.” Such brand communities may therefore be seen as hybrid spiritualities. It has to be noted, though, that these cases of extreme brand fandom are rather rare and that the studies investigating them have concentrated on the extreme cases.

11. Interestingly, even economics has been called a “religion”. Nelson (2001, i) writes: “Economists think of themselves as scientists, but as I will be arguing in this book, they are more like theologians”. In our terminology, we are faced with a “secular religion”.

12. A great number of Muslim consumer products and brands that have emerged, for example: Muslim drinks (Muslim-Up, Arab-Cola, Zam-Zam Cola, etc.), Muslim dolls (Muslim Barbies Razanne and Full), Muslim fast food (Halal Fried Chicken, Burger King), or “green leisure”.

13. Cutler and Winans (1999) for example, point to the career of George Barna who has specialized in teaching church marketing to churches; they also show that publications about church marketing have clearly increased in recent decades. Webb et al. (1998) locate the first attempts at formal church marketing back in the late 1950s, when James Culliton proposed that churches should use the 4 P’s’ of product, price, place, and promotion.

14. If we think of religious brand names (e.g., names of holy books, names of holy places, sacraments and rituals, pilgrimages, etc.) as pre-industrial property rights, they are non-economic and non-institutionalized exclusion rights, which include the moral, but not the commercial aspects of property rights. By institutionalization, we mean the legal framework of property rights which has been elevated to a global scale by the adoption in 1995 of the TRIPS (Trade Related Industrial Property Rights) agreement by member states of the World Trade Organization.

15. See for example : http://www.rtc.org/guarant/pg006.html.

16. The translation is ours. The original text is: “Die Kirche kann nicht Propaganda treiben. Die Kirche kann sich nicht selber wollen, bauen, rühmen wie alle anderen … Man kann nicht Gott dienen und mit dem Teufel und der Welt solche Rückversicherungen eingehen.”.