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3.5.4
Marketing
3.5.4.1
Aspects of marketing relevant to the Church
This is an area, clear ideas on which would be essential to
any orthodox managerial study, but which in the course of this study
engendered more ambivalence, and even downright abhorrence, than any
other - even the financial. The Church, it would seem, does not like
the idea of marketing; "it is in some way improper to transpose
commercial knowledge into the Christian field"
(B24)
, it is something
to be quietly relegated to the last item on the agenda, if indeed
it gets as far as that, or euphemistically rephrased so that it appears
to be something different; "we've no customers in that sense"
(C4)
.
But there is more to marketing than looking at people as
customers. It is - or can be - a much broader science studying
relationships between the organisation and the public it serves. And
in this case 'public' can be taken as both actual and potential
churchgoers.
Kotler
(B18)
divides marketing into certain broad divisions:
(i) Market appraisal. Whom are we serving, whom should we
be serving, and what do they think about us? This part
of marketing can be largely passive and it is hard to see
it offending any Church principles. Indeed one or two
such studies
(P4,T1)
have taken place, though not,
apparently, proceeded very far.
(ii) Product adaptation. When the market is known the product
can be adapted to suit it. Not necessarily by changing
its essential content but by acknowledging that certain
market segments have specialised needs which can best be
