Journal of Management, Spirituality & Religion

ISSN: 1476-6086 (Print) 1942-258X (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rmsr20

The marketing and consumption of spirituality and

religion

Diego Rinallo & Mathieu Alemany Oliver

To cite this article: Diego Rinallo & Mathieu Alemany Oliver (2019) The marketing and
consumption of spirituality and religion, Journal of Management, Spirituality & Religion, 16:1, 1-5,
DOI: 10.1080/14766086.2019.1555885

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/14766086.2019.1555885

Published online: 25 Dec 2018.

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JOURNAL OF MANAGEMENT, SPIRITUALITY & RELIGION
2019, VOL. 16, NO. 1, 1–5
https://doi.org/10.1080/14766086.2019.1555885

INTRODUCTION

The marketing and consumption of spirituality and religion

Diego Rinalloa and Mathieu Alemany Oliverb
a
Department of Marketing, Kedge Business School, Marseille, France; bSocial & Innovation Marketing
Laboratory, Toulouse Business School, Toulouse, France

Introduction
Since its inception, the Journal of Management, Spirituality & Religion (JMSR) has
published cutting-edge research on management, leadership, business ethics, human
resources, and organizational behavior to become a point of reference for researchers
interested in the religious and spiritual aspects of managing and organizing. JMSR has
already published work grounded in marketing and consumer behavior, albeit not in
a systematic manner. Yet, once workers, entrepreneurs, managers, and leaders leave the
workplace, they become consumers. At the same time, more often than not, the
organizations where they work need to sell products and services in the marketplace
to survive and thrive. With this special issue, our goal is to put the journal more firmly
on the radar of marketing and consumer researchers and, ultimately, to stimulate cross-
disciplinary conversations in this field of enquiry.
The understanding of the religious aspects and spiritual expressions of managing and
organizing can only be enriched by gaining deeper insight into spiritual, religious, and
mundane marketplaces and consumption practices. Additionally, marketing and con-
sumption studies can shed light on a variety of little-understood phenomena that are
prevalent in secularized societies where: both religious organizations and new spiritual
movements operate in a competitive marketplace; postmodern consumers mix and
match values, philosophies, and ideas from different religious and spiritual traditions;
and globalization, the internet and social media, tourism, and immigration provide
access to spiritual and religious resources and communities at an unprecedented scale.
In their mapping of literature in the field, Rinallo, Scott, and Maclaran (2013)
highlight four areas of research (see Figure 1). Their quadripartite classification builds
on the seminal work by Belk, Wallendorf, and Sherry (1989) on the sacred and the
profane in consumer research. By suggesting that the sacred can be empirically inves-
tigated and by putting the sacred aspect of consumption at the core of what is now
known as consumer culture theory, Belk, Wallendorf, and Sherry (1989) paved the way
for and shaped the subsequent exploration of consumers’ and marketers’ sacralization
of the mundane. Figure 1 differentiates the marketing and consumption of religion and
spirituality in the narrow sense from the sacred elements of profane consumer behavior
and further distinguishes between contributions on the basis of whether the key agents
investigated are consumers or marketers, which provides a useful representational tool
to map the field.

CONTACT Diego Rinallo diego.rinallo@kedgebs.com

© 2018 Association of Management, Spirituality & Religion
2 D. RINALLO AND M. ALEMANY OLIVER

Marketers

Marketers’ sacralisation The marketing of

of the mundane spirituality and religion
Key Agents

Consumers’
sacralization The consumption of
of the mundane spirituality and religion
Consumers
Profane Sacred

Main Context

Figure 1. The marketing and consumption of spirituality and religion: an overview.

Source: Adapted from Rinallo, Scott, and Maclaran (2013).

A great deal of work in marketing has examined consumers’ sacralization of mun-

dane products, services, and brands (e.g., Belk and Tumbat 2005; Muñiz and Schau
2005). Much less research has focused on the processes through which mundane
marketers and brands use spirituality and religion to enhance the value of their
offerings (e.g., Andreini et al. 2017). Despite the advice contained in popular manage-
ment books on how to create brand cults and “turn customers into believers” (Atkin,
2004; Ragas and Bueno 2002), researchers only recently started to unpack the processes
involved in brands’ cooptation of religious ideologies (Izberk-Bilgin 2012) or their open
transgression of religious values and practices (Rinallo et al. 2012). Similarly, the
marketing practices of religious/spiritual organizations, leaders, and movements had
previously received little attention in marketing and consumer research (e.g., Rinallo,
Maclaran, and Stevens 2016), despite the heightened interest – often critical in nature –
outside the field (e.g., Einstein 2008; Moore 1995). The theme of religious marketing
and consumption has surfaced in marketing journals (see recent special issues of the
International Journal of Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Marketing [2010, Vol. 15, no.
4], Journal of Macromarketing [2016, Vol. 36, no. 4], and Journal of Marketing
Management [forthcoming]), and there is an entire journal dedicated to the burgeoning
field of Islamic marketing: the Journal of Islamic Marketing.
For this special issue, entitled “The marketing and consumption of spirituality and
religion,” we selected six articles following a strict review process. We wanted this
special issue to offer an eclectic set of theories, concepts, and ideas that could help non-
marketing readers become familiar with what has been done in the past in marketing
and what is being done at present and, hopefully, give them inspiration for their own
work in their disciplines or managerial activities. The papers in this special issue also
contribute in various ways to marketing literature and take part in the discussion
regarding the marketing and consumption of spirituality and religion that other
marketing journals have started of late.
Readers will not be surprised to learn that the six articles comprising this special
issue are based on different disciplines, methodologies, and paradigms, and they are not
easily categorized into one quadrant or another of Figure 1. For instance, two articles
offer useful reviews that complement each other by taking micro and macro
 JOURNAL OF MANAGEMENT, SPIRITUALITY & RELIGION 3

perspectives, while empirical articles have based their various quantitative and qualita-
tive methodologies on different perspectives such psychology, history, and anthropol-
ogy. The result is a nuanced understanding of the complex relationships between
society, culture, markets, and consumption.
The first article, “Religions as brands? Religion and spirituality in consumer society,”
by Joerg Stolz and Jean-Claude Usunier, gives an overview of the religious consumer
society. In particular, they suggest some of the historical factors that have led to the
religious consumer society, and how individuals, religious organizations, and entrepre-
neurs have adapted to it. Finally, they provide religious organizations with solutions to
market and brand their products in contexts where the boundary between the religious
and the secular is blurred. We believe this article is a good introduction to the topic and
offers food for thought in the structure/agency debate.
In the second article, entitled “Religiosity and consumer behavior: a summarizing
review,” Ridhi Agarwala, Prashant Mishra, and Ramendra Singh provide a summary of
past research on consumer religiosity and its effect on materialism, ethics, intolerance,
risk aversion, attitude toward religious products, and economic shopping behavior. For
each relationship, the authors suggest research avenues and existing literature in sup-
port of their propositions. Since their review is based on an examination of articles on
religiosity published in marketing journals between 1990 and 2016, there is no doubt
that the framework, literature, and research avenues shared in this article will provide
valuable help to any doctoral student and researcher interested in religiosity from
a psychological perspective.
In the third article, Elizabeth A. Minton’s “Believing is buying: religiosity, advertising
skepticism, and corporate trust,” we continue with the theme of religiosity and its
effects on consumer behavior. Through three studies conducted in the United States,
the author examines the relationship between religiosity, advertising skepticism, general
corporate trust, and specific product/brand trust. This relationship between religiosity
and trust is particularly interesting as a discussion on distrust, alternative facts, and
more generally the post-truth world is emerging in marketing and consumer research
(see, for instance, the forthcoming special issue of the Journal of the Association of
Consumer Research focusing on “Trust in doubt: consuming in a post-truth world,”
edited by Robert V. Kozinets, Andrew Gershoff, and Tiffany White).
The fourth article shifts from a psychological perspective to a cultural approach to
the topic with the findings of an ethnography conducted in French monasteries. In
“The monastic product’s biography, a sacralization wave,” Marie-Catherine Paquier
illuminates the process that leads a monastic – originally sacred – product to be
desacralized as it enters the merchant sphere before being re-sacralized at the time of
purchase. This is a very particular moment that sees monastic marketers and religious
(as well as secular) consumers meet within a commercial area in a larger sacred place.
The study reveals a sinusoidal movement of meaning between the sacred and the
profane in the monastic product’s biography.
The fifth article, “The changing dichotomy between the sacred and the profane:
a historical analysis of the Santiago de Compostela pilgrimage,” by Véronique Cova,
Julien Bousquet, Cylvie Claveau, and Asim Qazi Shabir, invites us to keep thinking of
the relationship between the sacred and the profane at a time when spiritual destina-
tions are becoming increasingly popular. The authors argue that the pilgrimage to
4 D. RINALLO AND M. ALEMANY OLIVER

Santiago de Compostela has always integrated, in some way, both consumption and
market-related aspects. Through a historical analysis of this pilgrimage at three different
periods of history (i.e., Middle Ages, Renaissance, and Postmodernity), Cova et al. show
that the sacred and the profane are involved in a dynamic relationship that is shaped by
the context in which the pilgrimage takes place. While the article primarily focuses on
the different types of coexistence of the sacred and the profane, it also indirectly points
to what these different types of coexistence have been able to produce over time.
In the last article, Johan Fischer analyzes halal logos in Singapore as a religious visual
system that includes historical and political dimensions. Based on archival analysis and
observations in Singapore, the article, “Looking for religious logos in Singapore,”
suggests that halal logos in Singapore serve as more than mere proof of the halalness
of a product. These logos reflect power relations between, for instance, Singaporean and
transnational halal certifiers but also between the different ethnicities that compose
Singapore and the dominant Chinese values.
We live in interesting times where scholarly views on the disenchantment of the
world and secularization of society have proved to offer inadequate representations of
a much more complex reality where established religions coexist with emerging reli-
gious movements, where an increasing number of individuals are “spiritual but not
religious,” and where markets and consumption are affected – and, in turn, influence –
religion/spirituality as it intersects with politics, society, and culture. Most people today
are born, grow, learn, work, and live in a world shaped by consumer culture, and this
inevitably affects their search for religious and spiritual meaning in life. This special
issue is a modest contribution to a multidisciplinary conversation that has yet to
systematically unpack global and local ideologies, meanings, and practices.
We end this introduction by thanking all the reviewers who kindly agreed to devote
their time to evaluate the articles we received. We also thank the Journal of
Management, Spirituality & Religion, its editors, and support team for helping us during
the process.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors
Diego Rinallo, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Marketing at Kedge Business School, Marseille,
France. His work on consumer culture, spirituality, and religion has been published in the
Journal of Business Ethics, Journal of Macromarketing, and various conference proceedings. He
is a co-editor of Consumption and Spirituality (Routledge, 2012) and sits on the editorial board of
the Journal of Management, Spirituality & Religion. Contact: diego.rinallo@kedgebs.com.
Mathieu Alemany Oliver, Ph.D., is an academic and practitioner in the areas of consumer
culture, consumer behavior, and branding. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Marketing
at Toulouse Business School, France. His research interests focus on consumption-mediated
interpretations and constructions of reality. Contact: m.alemany-oliver@tbs-education.fr.
 JOURNAL OF MANAGEMENT, SPIRITUALITY & RELIGION 5

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