Religions as Brands: New Perspectives on the Marketization of Religion and Spirituality

During the twentieth century, religion has gone on the market place. Churches and religious groups are forced to ’sell god’ in order to be attractive to ’religious consumers’. More and more, religions are seen as ’brands’ that have to be recognizable to their members and the general public. This interdisciplinary book treats new developments in three fields that have hitherto evolved rather independently: (1) the commoditization of religion, (2) the link between religion and consumer behaviour, and (3) the economics of religion.

Jean-Claude Usunier is professor at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, in the Faculty of Business and Economics (HEC). His research interests are cross-cultural consumer behavior, cultural and linguistic aspects of international marketing, with a special interest in commoditization processes in international trade. He serves on the editorial board of several international business and marketing journals. His recent research was published in International Journal of Research in Marketing, Journal of Research in Personality, Time and Society, Journal of International Marketing, International Journal of Electronic Commerce, Journal of Business Communication, and European Journal of Marketing. His books include International and Cross-Cultural management Research (Sage, 1998), International Business Negotiations (Elsevier, 2003), AIDS and Business (Routledge, 2009), and Marketing Across Cultures (Pearson, 2009). Jörg Stolz is Professor of Sociology of Religion at the University of Lausanne. His research focuses on the explanation of secularization, the competition between the religious and the secular, evangelicalism, stereotypes, and religious pluralism with the theory of social mechanisms (analytical sociology). Concerning methods, he is especially interested in mixed methods research. He is president-elect of the International Society for the Sociology of Religion. He is the author of Soziologie der Fremdenfeindlichkeit: Theoretische und empirische Analysen and L’avenir des Réformés: Les Eglises face aux changements sociaux (with Edmée Ballif), and has edited the book Salvation goods and religious markets: Theory and Applications. He has published in various international journals such as the British Journal of Sociology, Sociology of Religion, or Review of Religious Research.