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This paper aims to examine market-mediated transformative capacities of Black African Pentecostalism. It does this by exploring the interface between religion, culture and identity to generate a fresh interpretation of how marketing is ritualized among UK’s Black Africans on the platform of Pentecostalism.

Methodology is based on in-depth interviews with respondents drawn from the African Pentecostal movements in London, UK. This paper shows how adherents’ responsiveness to Pentecostal dogmas generated market advantages.

The paper reveals the interconnectedness of religion, faith and culture which, in turn, coalesced into a dense network that defines the reproduction, organization and approach to entrepreneurial marketing.

Pentecostal practices unveil the marketing notion of “Pentepreneurship”, which combines both spiritual and enterprise activities to formulate a fused space of engagement straddling the sacred and the secular. This fusion points to a unique platform of entrepreneurial marketing that bestrides ethno-cultural, religious and economic identities.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between perceived benefits and church participation among regular and irregular church goers (ICG).

The research incorporates a descriptive research design. In total, 564 questionnaires were completed by active and relapsed members of churches in Australia. Hierarchical regression analysis was conducted to examine the relationship between constructs.

This study provides empirical evidence that perceived spiritual and social benefits have a positive and significant relationship with church participation in both regular and ICG sample group. Perceived purpose-in-life (PIL) benefits are not related to church participation in both sample groups.

The findings may guide leaders of religious organisations to understand the importance of spiritual and social benefits in attracting prospective church members. The marketing message of religious organisation should therefore focus on spiritual and social appeals.

Past researchers have not looked into the dynamic relationships between perceived benefits and church participation among regular and irregular church members, particularly in Australia, hence research is to be called for in this area. The study provides a further empirical support for the importance of social benefits within the church settings.

While the relevance and rationale of strategic communication in organized religion are prevalent in academic and professional literature, there exists a dearth of both theoretical concepts and empirical knowledge, especially from a European perspective. Therefore, this chapter examines how strategic communication can be modelled in organized religion with its specific characteristics and logics by building a framework for strategic communication in this field of research. The framework questions perspectives of strategic communication and communication management that only concentrate on entities like famous persons, groups, movements or organizations and less on belief systems, organized and less organized entities interacting with each other. Religious organizations follow other rationalities like companies or non-profit organizations. Therefore, theories of corporate communication or public relations do not fit within the realm of organized religion, whose mission goes far beyond the organization. Taking into account religious institutions in strategic communication, this chapter delivers new theoretical insights by demonstrating how strategic communication can contribute to the specific purposes of organized religion. Furthermore, the study indicates the specific challenges communication professionals working in the area of religion are confronted with. Finally, it offers practical solutions for the specific field of organized religion by evolving specific target horizons of organized religion. Activating and developing the communication function of more or less independent bodies are main tasks for communication professionals working in organized religion and other meta-organizations.

The last three decades of the 20th century was a period of momentous social, economic, political and religious turmoil in many African societies. Nigeria is a prime example. Although the economic transformations of this period were perhaps bigger than other kinds of change, religious shifts probably had more remarkable social effects. One particularly noticeable development was the emergence of a new strand of Pentecostalism that serves as a source of political power and as a vehicle for economic mobilisation. Embedded in a theology of materialism and a redefinition of ‘money’, this new ideology found a fertile ground among local and global corporations struggling to cope with problems such as a devalued currency and political corruption and instability. Using data from ethnographic research on the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG), with more than 10,000 congregations worldwide, this chapter shows how the near economic meltdown of the last decades of the 20th century precipitated a massive religious (re)engagement with economic structures and practices in Nigeria.

This purpose of this paper is to show that theories of marketing, as evident in a range of key textbooks, represent a set of reified articles of faith, which are unreflective of the reality of the practitioner's world.

This paper draws on some interpretative research findings into the nature of marketing practice. A series of phenomenological interviews were carried out with senior marketing managers. Their views were compared with existing representations of marketing as it appears in a range of textbooks.

Marketing textbooks were found to be highly alike drawing as they do on an implicit systems based paradigm. The findings from the interviews show that marketing is a locally defined, highly contextualised activity that is dissimilar in many ways to the generalised prescriptions of mainstream textbooks.

Scholarship in the form of textbooks should attempt to move away from the dictates of the dominant articles of faith as espoused by the established church of marketing. Differing interpretations of marketing should not be viewed as being heretical. They should be seen as being the result of diverse organisational contexts and outcomes which stem from the socially constructed nature of reality.

The contribution of this paper is to show that marketing in practice is not constituted by textbook theory, but by context and the individual perceptions of people as they carry out their actions and routines in organisations.

The aim of this study is to explore the attempts by early twentieth century cyclecar manufacturers in the UK and USA to segment the personal transportation market and to position early cyclecars through the development of unique product attributes and advertising. More specifically, the authors speculate about early twentieth century British cyclecar marketing strategies that implicitly recognized a sports car segment and positioned cyclecar brands to meet the needs of that segment.

The primary source material for this research is a sample of 205 print ads and articles from the early twentieth century (1912-1921) specialty magazines devoted to cyclecars in the UK and USA. We combine the content analysis of the sample of ads with a critical reading and interpretation of a sub-sample of those same ads.

Between 1910 and 1921, a new form of personal transportation was developed that combined the technology of motorcycles with the utility of automobiles. Known as “cyclecars”, these vehicles were typically constructed from off-the-shelf motorcycle parts and assembled in small batches by a myriad of manufacturers. Current scholarship suggests that the cyclecar craze of the 1910s ended with the introduction of low cost “real” automobiles such as the Ford Model T, Austin 7 and Morris Oxford. We use the content analysis of cyclecar advertisements to construct a brand-positioning map of this emerging segment of the transportation market. We argue that while the core cyclecar positioning was in direct competition with small economically positioned cars such as the Ford Model T, a significant part of the market, primarily centered in the UK, could be considered as for sports cars. That segment of the cyclecar market, along with the development of cyclecars into urban delivery vehicles, continued over time and has re-emerged today in a range of three-wheeled sports cars, including the updating and continuation of the British Morgan 3 Wheeler model which was launched during the heyday of cyclecars.

The authors can only speculate about the impact of the Ford Model T in this study. Further research on that issue is needed.

This is the first historical study of cyclecar marketing. Most of what little has been published about cyclecars focuses on their design and technology.

Christian Churches in the United States are facing decline and, just like other organizations, must renew themselves. This study explores the culture of a successful Midwestern church and its climate for innovation in an effort to move this church toward renewal. Through multiple regressionanalysis, support was found for the literature’s claims that a strong adhocracy culture has a significantly positive relationship with climate for innovation. However, the findings offered startling support that a strong clan culture has an even greater significant correlation with climate for innovation. Interestingly, it was found that market and hierarchy cultures have a small inverse relationship with support for innovation, and also that market culture has a small inverse relationship with resource supply. These results have significant implications for churches, ministries, and other nonprofit leaders and their organizations.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the motives and giving behaviours of donors towards Islamic charities in Indonesia by using various demographic, socio-economic, psychographic and motivational/situational characteristics. Based on these analyses, relevant marketing implications are also discussed. The study hopes to enrich Islamic marketing literature and contribute further to the understanding of marketing within the context of the Islamic voluntary sector.

This empirical paper primarily employs a quantitative approach in analysing the giving behaviours. The primary data is gathered through a survey conducted in January 2011 involving 300 Indonesian Muslim donors. The results are analysed with descriptive and correlation statistics.

First, the analysis highlights that the main causes for charitable giving are to help the poor/needy and support religious causes. Second, most of the donors provide funds through “informal” Islamic charities. Third, most of the individual donors are young, educated and possess strong humanitarian concerns. Interestingly, although there is a positive correlation between income and donation, individuals who donate more are not the rich but the middle-income earners. Finally, there is evidence to indicate that donors may increase donations even during economic crisis.

Understanding donor's characteristics and behaviours are essential in designing and implementing an effective marketing framework, which is expected to retain and manage long-term supportive relationships with the donors. Relationship marketing framework and branding strategy are also worth considered for this purpose.

Few studies analyse Islamic charities in the modern marketing perspective, especially in Indonesia. This study, therefore, fills the gap in the research area.

Megachurches are thriving in religious markets at a time when Americans are asserting their ability as consumers of religious products to engage in religious switching. The apparent success of megachurches, which often provide a low cost and low commitment path by which religious refugees may join the church, seems to challenge Iannocconne's theory that high commitment churches will thrive while low commitment churches will atrophy. This paper aims to investigate this issue.

This paper employs a signaling model to illustrate the strategy and organizational forms megachurches employ to indicate a match between what the church produces and the religious refugee wishes to consume in an effort to increase their membership. The model illustrates that megachurches expect little in regard to financial or time commitment of new attendees. However, once the attendees perceive a good fit with the church, the megachurch increases its expectation of commitment. Data from the FACT2000 survey provide evidence in support of the model's predictions.

Data from the FACT2000 survey provide evidence in support of the model's predictions.

The paper serves to illustrate the dynamic process by which megachurches attract new attendees and transform those that find a good fit between their needs and what the church offers into full members of the church.