An empirical investigation of the link between market orientation and church performance

Will the same marketing tools and strategies used in the for-profit world of business work in a church environment? George Barna, America's most well recognized and respected authority on business and religion has spent the last 20 years writing over a dozen books attempting to convince church leaders to adopt a market-oriented philosophy. Yet, to date, there has been no scientific inquiry aimed at testing this assumption. This research provides the first known scholarly study of the church sector which empirically examines the relationship between market orientation and performance. Gray et al.'s (1998) five-dimension market orientation scale was adapted to the church sector and was found to be both valid and reliable. Using a sample of 230 church leaders from the five largest Christian denominational families in the United States, the authors found tentative evidence to suggest market orientation is correlated with improved overall church performance. Increases in market orientation were effective in garnering higher levels of visitors to the various church service offerings. However, it was also discovered that the majority of market-oriented churches struggle to transition these visitors into long-term, financially committed members. Finally, the results indicate that a fairly large percentage of modern churches in the U.S. have adopted a market- oriented culture. Directions for future research, limitations of the study and managerial implications of the findings are subsequently identified and discussed. (C) 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.