CHAPTER ONE

1.0            INTRODUCTION

1.1 BACKGROUND STUDY

One aspect of marketing that man y researchers have not concentrated much is “ecclesiastic marketing” and according to Sherman and Delvin (2001) it refers to the application of marketing in order to spread a religion, to attract proselytes and to obtain their loyalty and that is increasingly used by different religious groups, through specific institutions such as churches or praying buildings and missions in order to get the wanted answer from a target market. We consider this definition of church marketing being too commercial, referring to religion as a normal service, not as a social one. Another view, of Christian origin is offered by Prehn(2001) which states that religious marketing is a serving measure that consists of a sum of activities (every action and process that tells the story) involved in moving the Salvation good (produced by God through the Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ) in order to help the one who intends to become consumer(a lost human being) to accept this Salvation. The limits of this approach lies in two aspects. The first one regards the fact that religious marketing is analyzed only from a Christian perspective. The second aspect is related to the fact that it refers only to the “spiritual” exchange. In reality, church marketing can be used by any Church or religious organization, and the pursued goals can be less grandiose (for example, fundraising).In the opinion of Stevens et al. (2004), church marketing means analysis, planning and management of the voluntary exchange between a religious organization and its constituents, with the aim of satisfying the needs of both parties. Religious marketing focuses on analyzing the needs of its constituents, on developing marketing programs to satisfy those needs, on offering them at the right place and time, on effective and efficient communication with the constituents and on attracting the necessary resources in order to support the activities of the organization. The authors describe the “constituents” of a religious organization as being members, employees, participants, supporters and all other persons affected by the organization.

Churches all over the globe and Nigeria in particular have become a fast growing business. With the daily influx of churches in every nook and cranny in our society, churches have become one of the biggest employers of the labour market. In spite of the growth of churches, the business is facing a lot of administrative challenges. For instance, foremost churches such as Catholic and Methodist have lost most of their members over the years. There has been serious migration from these two older churches to newly emerging Pentecostal churches. In a research conducted by Barna (2008), he discovered there has been no growth in the proportion of the adult population that can be classified as “born again” Christians. (these are people that have made personal commitment to Jesus Christ, accepting Him as their Lord and Saviour). Secondly, he found out that since 1970, there has been no reasonable changes in the number of adult members that attend weekly programmes. Attitudinal studies have also shown that people confidence in churches is fast declining. More dramatic was the finding that the average protestant congregation has fifty to sixty adults who regularly attend Sunday morning worship services.

Emphatically speaking, the churches that are growing will be those that are responsive to the needs of their customers and then satisfy these needs satisfactorily. They are responsive by understanding what those needs are, how they might function to satisfy certain needs, the process by which persons choose a congregation to satisfy their needs, and how to ensure that all this can take place within the structure of a well-defined mission for the congregation.

Many of today’s growing churches have adopted marketing orientation and have also understood the importance of marketing concept and marketing segmentation. This paper aim at offering advice to religious organizations to adopt market segmentation strategies, examine the successful implementation of market segmentation by certain successful growing churches and to suggest some appropriate market segmentation strategies for religious organizations. Therefore, this study focuses on the roles of marketing strategies in enhancing church growth, using ibeju-lekki local government as case study.

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