Marketing
activities and faith based organizations
Chapter one
Introduction
1.1.
Background
of the study
Marketing
is an integral part of any organization. This would help increase customer base
and make an organization very popular if adequately and properly done.
Marketing is the action or business ofpromoting and selling products or
services, including market research and advertising( Wikipedia).
It can also be a process for creating, communicating, delivering,
and exchanging offeringsthat have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large. Organizations
that want to be successful must do all it can to have an effective and
efficient marketing network. There are various marketing activities that
organizations can employ to boost patronage. They are;
Relationship Marketing
Relationship marketing can be highly effective, but it also
requires a great deal of commitment on the part of those doing the marketing.
Relationship marketing occurs over a period of time, creating a long-term
strategy that addresses every stage of the customer cycle. It delivers the
message of the business to customers on an ongoing basis, often requiring a
daily commitment from the business. Relationship marketing activities include
such practices as welcoming customers, soliciting feedback, creating customer
loyalty programs, emails thanking customers for purchases and individual
meetings with high-volume customers or influencers.
Online Marketing
Online marketing has been the hottest trend of the past decade.
Many small businesses have found it especially effective because they can
control their marketing budget while targeting niche markets. Some initial
online marketing strategies include pay-per-click advertising, banner
advertising, email marketing and search engine-optimized website content.
Social networking sites have also become sources for online marketing for businesses
of all sizes. Social networking marketing on such sites as Twitter and Facebook
are very low in cost, but require a great deal of time commitment, as frequent
updates contribute to greater success.
Traditional Marketing
Online marketing has not completely
supplanted more traditional marketing methods, in no small part because many of
them remain effective ways to reach an audience and to create several different
impressions. Traditional marketing activities include hosting customer events,
participating in the community, creating television and radio spots, sending
out direct mail, renting billboards, sending costumed employees out with
billboards to wave in customers and taking out print advertisements in
newspapers, magazines and trade journals.
Other Types of Marketing
Marketing centers on the customer,
which means there are nearly as many different types of marketing as there are
types of customers. The way to reach a particular market segment will depend on
the characteristics of the people within that segment. For some, such things as
newsletter marketing will be effective, while other niches respond better to
messages delivered at trade shows or through personal referrals. Guerilla
marketing refer to such practices as organizing a rave or creating an iPhone
app. Other marketing types include affiliate marketing, viral marketing,
database marketing or promotional marketing. One important key to creative
marketing choices is that a business can choose only those activities that are
in harmony with the image it wants to portray.
Faith based
organizations
Faith
based organizations are organizations
based on a particular
religious ideology, has religiously oriented mission statements and often draws
its activists (leaders, staff, volunteers) from a particular religious
group(Wikipedia).
“Faith-based
organization” currently acts as broad shorthand for a wide spectrum of
organizations that deserve more specific treatment in the academic literature.
Those who have attempted to move beyond a brief dictionary-style definition
frequently turn to a typology format to accommodate the diversity of
organizations. This recognizes the relevance of the concept of religious
integration: organizations incorporate religion “in a variety of ways and
intensities.” The two typologies discussed below represent the kinds of broad
criteria researchers find useful and important.
Steven Rathgeb Smith and Michael R. Sosin’s 2001 typology rejects the term
“faith-based” in favor of “faith-related,” arguing that the more common term is
too exclusive and would preclude the typology from addressing the full range of
organizations with religious connections. They identify three major sources of
constraint: resources, authority, and culture. Organizations and faith “couple”
along these dimensions, to varying degrees. Smith and Sosin derived their data
from a case study of social service organizations in Seattle and Chicago. They
described coupling variance among organizations categorized by mission, service
focus, and bureaucracy. Smith and Sosin note that all of the organizations they
studied maintain ties with secular culture and frequently encourage greater
government responsibility for the poor; most faith-related organizations also
attempted to mitigate concerns about desecularization through deliberate
resource choices.
In 2004, Ronald Sider (a leading evangelical scholar in the field of
development and social justice) and Heidi Rolland Unruh produced a typology
based on case studies of domestic community service organizations. Their work
offered distinct criteria for organizations and programs, rightly noting that
programs run by religious organizations may be completely free of religious
references, and vice versa. Sider and Unruh separated organizations into six
different categories (listed from most to least faith-based): faith-permeated,
faith-centered, faith-affiliated, faith-background, faith-secular partnership,
and secular. They described categorical archetypes according to eight criteria,
including mission statement, board member and staff selection, and financial
support. Programs and projects were placed into identical categories using
criteria such as religious program content and expectation of religious
outcome. Sider and Unruh offer the caveat that their criteria deliberately
address only the “tangibly expressive ways” organizations incorporate religion
and do not address personal issues of belief and motivation, since the former
are both more visible and controversial.
Much of the current academic literature on this topic reflects the researchers’
concern with (and access to) U.S.-oriented groups. Less work has been done on
faith-based organizations with an international relief and development focus.
Nevertheless, general definitional concerns are roughly similar, especially for
global organizations with Nigerian roots.
1.2.
Statement
of the general problem
The
activities of faith based organizations in Nigeria have witnessed a steady
decline in patronage due to religious inclination of Nigerians. Since it’s a
proven fact that marketing improves other organizations that are not faith
based.
1.3.
Aims
and objectives of the study
The
following are the aims and objectives of carrying out this research work:
Ø To
know if marketing can actually arrest the low patronage of customers.
Ø To
know if there is a relationship between marketing activities and faith based
organizations in Port Harcourt.
Ø To
advice the public on the inevitability of marketing.
1.4.
Significance
of the study
A
major importance of this study is to advice faith based organizations in port
Harcourt on proven ways of improving patronage by strategic marketing. This
study would also unveil the unique relationship between marketing and faith
based organizations in Port Harcourt.
1.5.
Scope
and limitation of the study
This
study is restricted to the garden city of port Harcourt, rivers state and its
focused on the effect of marketing activities on faith based organizations.
Financial and time constraint in getting the enough data from respondents was a
major limitation of this work.
1.6.
Research
questions
1. Is
there a relationship between marketing activities and the level of patronage of
faith based organizations?
2. Do
faith based organizations need to employ adequate marketing strategies to
improve their level of patronage?
3. Is
there a significant impact of marketing activities on faith based organizations
in Port Harcourt?
1.7.
Research hypothesis
H0:
there is no significant relationship between marketing activities and
performance of faith based organizations in Port Harcourt.
H1:
there is a significant relationship between marketing activities and
performance of faith based organizations in Port Harcourt.
H0:
there is no significant impact of marketing activities and faith based
organizations.
H1:
there is a significant impact of marketing activities and faith based
organizations.
1.8.
Definition
of terms
Ø Faith based
organization(FBO): organization based
on a particular religious ideology, has religiously oriented mission statements
and often draws its activists (leaders, staff, volunteers) from a particular
religious group.
Ø Marketing:this is about communicating the value of a product, service or brand to customers or consumers for the purpose of promoting or selling that
product, service, or brand. The oldest – and perhaps simplest and most natural
form of marketing – is ‘word of mouth’ (WOM) marketing, in which consumers
convey their experiences of a product, service or brand in their day-to-day
communications with others. These communications can of course be either
positive or negative.
Ø Marketing activity:marketing activities are nothing but how you
are going to handle the marketing mix (price, product,place,promotion,positioning,people,physical
evidence) in order to market your product successfully. The various activities
involved in handling the above mentioned comprises the marketing activities.
Ø Organization :this is an entity comprising multiple people, such as an institution or an association, that has a collective goal and is linked to an external
environment.