The marketing and consumption of spirituality and religion

Introduction

Since its inception, the Journal of Management, Spirituality & Religion (JMSR) has published cutting-edge research on management, leadership, business ethics, human resources, and organizational behavior to become a point of reference for researchers interested in the religious and spiritual aspects of managing and organizing. JMSR has already published work grounded in marketing and consumer behavior, albeit not in a systematic manner. Yet, once workers, entrepreneurs, managers, and leaders leave the workplace, they become consumers. At the same time, more often than not, the organizations where they work need to sell products and services in the marketplace to survive and thrive. With this special issue, our goal is to put the journal more firmly on the radar of marketing and consumer researchers and, ultimately, to stimulate cross-disciplinary conversations in this field of enquiry.

The understanding of the religious aspects and spiritual expressions of managing and organizing can only be enriched by gaining deeper insight into spiritual, religious, and mundane marketplaces and consumption practices. Additionally, marketing and consumption studies can shed light on a variety of little-understood phenomena that are prevalent in secularized societies where: both religious organizations and new spiritual movements operate in a competitive marketplace; postmodern consumers mix and match values, philosophies, and ideas from different religious and spiritual traditions; and globalization, the internet and social media, tourism, and immigration provide access to spiritual and religious resources and communities at an unprecedented scale.

In their mapping of literature in the field, Rinallo, Scott, and Maclaran (2013) highlight four areas of research (see Figure 1). Their quadripartite classification builds on the seminal work by Belk, Wallendorf, and Sherry (1989) on the sacred and the profane in consumer research. By suggesting that the sacred can be empirically investigated and by putting the sacred aspect of consumption at the core of what is now known as consumer culture theory, Belk, Wallendorf, and Sherry (1989) paved the way for and shaped the subsequent exploration of consumers’ and marketers’ sacralization of the mundane. Figure 1 differentiates the marketing and consumption of religion and spirituality in the narrow sense from the sacred elements of profane consumer behavior and further distinguishes between contributions on the basis of whether the key agents investigated are consumers or marketers, which provides a useful representational tool to map the field.

Figure 1. The marketing and consumption of spirituality and religion: an overview.

Source: Adapted from Rinallo, Scott, and Maclaran (2013).

A great deal of work in marketing has examined consumers’ sacralization of mundane products, services, and brands (e.g., Belk and Tumbat 2005; Muñiz and Schau 2005). Much less research has focused on the processes through which mundane marketers and brands use spirituality and religion to enhance the value of their offerings (e.g., Andreini et al. 2017). Despite the advice contained in popular management books on how to create brand cults and “turn customers into believers” (Atkin, 2004; Ragas and Bueno 2002), researchers only recently started to unpack the processes involved in brands’ cooptation of religious ideologies (Izberk-Bilgin 2012) or their open transgression of religious values and practices (Rinallo et al. 2012). Similarly, the marketing practices of religious/spiritual organizations, leaders, and movements had previously received little attention in marketing and consumer research (e.g., Rinallo, Maclaran, and Stevens 2016), despite the heightened interest – often critical in nature – outside the field (e.g., Einstein 2008; Moore 1995). The theme of religious marketing and consumption has surfaced in marketing journals (see recent special issues of the International Journal of Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Marketing [2010, Vol. 15, no. 4], Journal of Macromarketing [2016, Vol. 36, no. 4], and Journal of Marketing Management [forthcoming]), and there is an entire journal dedicated to the burgeoning field of Islamic marketing: the Journal of Islamic Marketing.

For this special issue, entitled “The marketing and consumption of spirituality and religion,” we selected six articles following a strict review process. We wanted this special issue to offer an eclectic set of theories, concepts, and ideas that could help non-marketing readers become familiar with what has been done in the past in marketing and what is being done at present and, hopefully, give them inspiration for their own work in their disciplines or managerial activities. The papers in this special issue also contribute in various ways to marketing literature and take part in the discussion regarding the marketing and consumption of spirituality and religion that other marketing journals have started of late.

Readers will not be surprised to learn that the six articles comprising this special issue are based on different disciplines, methodologies, and paradigms, and they are not easily categorized into one quadrant or another of Figure 1. For instance, two articles offer useful reviews that complement each other by taking micro and macro perspectives, while empirical articles have based their various quantitative and qualitative methodologies on different perspectives such psychology, history, and anthropology. The result is a nuanced understanding of the complex relationships between society, culture, markets, and consumption.

The first article, “Religions as brands? Religion and spirituality in consumer society,” by Joerg Stolz and Jean-Claude Usunier, gives an overview of the religious consumer society. In particular, they suggest some of the historical factors that have led to the religious consumer society, and how individuals, religious organizations, and entrepreneurs have adapted to it. Finally, they provide religious organizations with solutions to market and brand their products in contexts where the boundary between the religious and the secular is blurred. We believe this article is a good introduction to the topic and offers food for thought in the structure/agency debate.

In the second article, entitled “Religiosity and consumer behavior: a summarizing review,” Ridhi Agarwala, Prashant Mishra, and Ramendra Singh provide a summary of past research on consumer religiosity and its effect on materialism, ethics, intolerance, risk aversion, attitude toward religious products, and economic shopping behavior. For each relationship, the authors suggest research avenues and existing literature in support of their propositions. Since their review is based on an examination of articles on religiosity published in marketing journals between 1990 and 2016, there is no doubt that the framework, literature, and research avenues shared in this article will provide valuable help to any doctoral student and researcher interested in religiosity from a psychological perspective.

In the third article, Elizabeth A. Minton’s “Believing is buying: religiosity, advertising skepticism, and corporate trust,” we continue with the theme of religiosity and its effects on consumer behavior. Through three studies conducted in the United States, the author examines the relationship between religiosity, advertising skepticism, general corporate trust, and specific product/brand trust. This relationship between religiosity and trust is particularly interesting as a discussion on distrust, alternative facts, and more generally the post-truth world is emerging in marketing and consumer research (see, for instance, the forthcoming special issue of the Journal of the Association of Consumer Research focusing on “Trust in doubt: consuming in a post-truth world,” edited by Robert V. Kozinets, Andrew Gershoff, and Tiffany White).

The fourth article shifts from a psychological perspective to a cultural approach to the topic with the findings of an ethnography conducted in French monasteries. In “The monastic product’s biography, a sacralization wave,” Marie-Catherine Paquier illuminates the process that leads a monastic – originally sacred – product to be desacralized as it enters the merchant sphere before being re-sacralized at the time of purchase. This is a very particular moment that sees monastic marketers and religious (as well as secular) consumers meet within a commercial area in a larger sacred place. The study reveals a sinusoidal movement of meaning between the sacred and the profane in the monastic product’s biography.

The fifth article, “The changing dichotomy between the sacred and the profane: a historical analysis of the Santiago de Compostela pilgrimage,” by Véronique Cova, Julien Bousquet, Cylvie Claveau, and Asim Qazi Shabir, invites us to keep thinking of the relationship between the sacred and the profane at a time when spiritual destinations are becoming increasingly popular. The authors argue that the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela has always integrated, in some way, both consumption and market-related aspects. Through a historical analysis of this pilgrimage at three different periods of history (i.e., Middle Ages, Renaissance, and Postmodernity), Cova et al. show that the sacred and the profane are involved in a dynamic relationship that is shaped by the context in which the pilgrimage takes place. While the article primarily focuses on the different types of coexistence of the sacred and the profane, it also indirectly points to what these different types of coexistence have been able to produce over time.

In the last article, Johan Fischer analyzes halal logos in Singapore as a religious visual system that includes historical and political dimensions. Based on archival analysis and observations in Singapore, the article, “Looking for religious logos in Singapore,” suggests that halal logos in Singapore serve as more than mere proof of the halalness of a product. These logos reflect power relations between, for instance, Singaporean and transnational halal certifiers but also between the different ethnicities that compose Singapore and the dominant Chinese values.

We live in interesting times where scholarly views on the disenchantment of the world and secularization of society have proved to offer inadequate representations of a much more complex reality where established religions coexist with emerging religious movements, where an increasing number of individuals are “spiritual but not religious,” and where markets and consumption are affected – and, in turn, influence – religion/spirituality as it intersects with politics, society, and culture. Most people today are born, grow, learn, work, and live in a world shaped by consumer culture, and this inevitably affects their search for religious and spiritual meaning in life. This special issue is a modest contribution to a multidisciplinary conversation that has yet to systematically unpack global and local ideologies, meanings, and practices.

We end this introduction by thanking all the reviewers who kindly agreed to devote their time to evaluate the articles we received. We also thank the Journal of Management, Spirituality & Religion, its editors, and support team for helping us during the process.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Diego Rinallo

Diego Rinallo, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Marketing at Kedge Business School, Marseille, France. His work on consumer culture, spirituality, and religion has been published in the Journal of Business Ethics, Journal of Macromarketing, and various conference proceedings. He is a co-editor of Consumption and Spirituality (Routledge, 2012) and sits on the editorial board of the Journal of Management, Spirituality & Religion. Contact: [email protected].

Mathieu Alemany Oliver

Mathieu Alemany Oliver, Ph.D., is an academic and practitioner in the areas of consumer culture, consumer behavior, and branding. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Marketing at Toulouse Business School, France. His research interests focus on consumption-mediated interpretations and constructions of reality. Contact: [email protected].