Marketing our church

Marketing Information Services to analyze Seventh-day Adventists.

Kermit Netteburg, Ph. D., now communication director for the Columbia Union Conference, was associate professor of communications at Andrews University when he wrote this article.

In North America the growth of the Adventist Church has not kept pace with either the growth of the population or the church's growth in the rest of the world. This disturbed church leaders and prompted them to commission a research group at the Institute of Church Ministry to do a marketing study.

The research group could help the church improve its outreach in two ways. It could identify the types of people the church is already reaching and suggest ways to reach these people more efficiently. And it could identify the types of people the church is not reaching and find entry events and pathways programs that would meet their felt needs. To accomplish these objectives, the research group used state-of-the-art marketing techniques.

Up through the early 1900s American businesses sought to increase sales by focusing on their products, aiming simply to improve their quality and to make them more efficiently. The feeling of the times is best summarized by the slogan "Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door."

But times have changed. In the 1980s marketing managers look at what types of people use what kinds of products under what circumstances. To help them determine this, they chart the age, income, education, sex, mobility, occupation, leisure-time activities, and other characteristics of purchasers and nonpurchasers.

For instance, Kentucky Fried Chicken studied its customers and found that they were not primarily families eating out, but working mothers bringing home food for supper. Likewise, Cadillac learned that most of its buyers were older affluent people; younger affluent people bought BMWs or Porsches.

Understanding who bought their products helped the marketing people in several ways. Kentucky Fried Chicken knew that working mothers wanted to see themselves as successful homemakers as well as career women. So its advertising message "Finger-Lickin' Good" became "it's so nice to feel so good about a meal."

Kentucky Fried Chicken also knew that working mothers didn't want to buy four little boxes of chicken dinners; they wanted to fix part of the meal. So it emphasized buckets of chicken containing 9 or 15 pieces. And rather than showing a family of four eating out, Kentucky Fried Chicken ads showed women picking up a bucket of chicken and leaving.

Similarly, Cadillac placed their television ads in network news programs, which have the oldest audience of any television program. And to appeal to younger buyers, they created a smaller, more responsive car.

Some have questioned whether marketing strategies should be applied to church work. But Jesus Himself described segmentation in the parable of the sower. He pointed out that not all types of ground are equally fertile, that not all people are equally ready to hear the good news. Market analysis simply asks what the condition of the soil is.

Analyzing Adventists

Several companies can group Americans into similar lifestyle clusters, or segments. Our group selected Donnelley Marketing Information Services to analyze Seventh-day Adventists. Its data base consists of 75 million unduplicated households, compiled by adding car registrations and telephone directory listings to the 1980 U.S. census data.

The Donnelley data base is enhanced with 413 million other records, such as warranty cards, birth records, and student lists. These records provide age, sex, and household composition information. Donnelley also merges into this file purchase information and media habits from several other companies such as Nielsen and Simmons.

Then Donnelley analyzes this data base to create ClusterPlus, its geodemographic market segmentation tool. The ClusterPlus model uses multivariate analysis of the 1,600 demographic variables in the Donnelley master file — and identifies 47 distinct clusters. Each cluster represents a unique segment of the U.S. population, a group with its own distinctive characteristics and lifestyle.

To identify the segments Adventists are reaching, we had to develop lists of members of the Adventist Church. Then these lists were matched against the Donnelley master file to find out what clusters of American households were represented in the Adventist Church — and which were not.

We collected and analyzed two lists: (1) Total Believers — all Adventists in America, and (2) New Believers — adults baptized into the church in 1982 and 1983.

To make up the Total Believers list, the research group collected the mailing lists of the eight union conference papers in the United States. We purged these lists of nonresidential addresses and ended up with a master file of 265,761 households.

For the New Believers list, we acquired the 1982 and 1983 baptismal records of the 50 conferences in America. We eliminated the names of people under 18, people who resided at the same address as someone else who was baptized, and people without addresses on the baptismal report. This process yielded a total of 23,781 New Believer households.

One severe limitation hampered our research. Only 46 of the 50 conferences sent baptismal records. Though that was an excellent response rate, missing almost 10 percent of the conferences concerned us. But the fact that all four missing conferences were Black conferences concerned us even more. Since there are only nine Black conferences in America, our report missed 44 percent. This skewed the data. Adventist New Believer success with predominantly Black clusters is understated drastically.

Reading the chart, graphs, and tables

So what types of people are Seventh-day Adventists? Graphs A and B show that Adventists are not evenly distributed throughout the clusters of Americans.

The two graphs present similar information. The numbers along the bottom of the graphs rank the clusters according to socioeconomic standing. The numbers along the left-hand side are arbitrary indexes of Adventist penetration into those clusters, with 100 representing the average. Bars that rise above 100 indicate clusters in which the church has greater than average percentages of Adventists. Bars that fall below 100 indicate clusters with less than average percentages of Adventists.

Graph A—Total Believers—shows that 20 of the 47 clusters have indexes of more than 100, or above average numbers of Adventists. It also shows that only 11 clusters have indexes less than 70, or well below average.

Graph B—New Believers—shows that 19 of the 47 clusters are above the average of 100, while 15 have indexes below 70. Graph B also shows that in two clusters—numbers 36 and 46—the growth of our church far exceeds that in any other cluster. Those clusters are between 50 and 65 percent Hispanic, illustrating that in America growth among Hispanics dominates Adventist Church growth.

But what are the characteristics of the clusters with Adventists? And what of those clusters without Adventists? Tables 1-4 present this data.

These tables were created by developing a 2' x 2' chart that combines the Total Believer and the New Believer indexes. The Tried and True group (described more fully in Table 1) shows the characteristics of clusters in which both the Total Believer and New Believer indexes were greater than 100. In other words, the church has a relatively high percentage of members among these particular population groups, and we find them quite receptive to our evangelism.

The Newly Found group (Table 2) shows the characteristics of clusters in which the New Believer index is greater than 100, but the Total Believer index is less than 100. Although we currently have a relatively low percentage of members among these population groups, we are making inroads with our evangelism—they are proving themselves quite receptive also.

Both of the next two groups are cause for concern. The first, Losing Ground (Table 3), contains clusters in which we have higher than average membership, but to which apparently our message—or at least our evangelism—makes little appeal. We are doing poorly at winning those represented by these clusters. And if our message doesn't appeal to the people characterized by these clusters who are outside the church, could it be that many of our apostasies are occurring from church members who are among these groups?

The last group of clusters, Unplowed Ground (Table 4), identifies those clusters of people that we have not reached in the past—as illustrated by our current lack of membership there—and that we are not now reaching.

Adventist successes and failures

Jesus said that His people should go everywhere, preaching the gospel to every nation, tongue, and people. The Total Believers graph shows that the Adventist Church is doing that in North America. Only 3 of the 47 clusters have penetration indexes less than 50. In other words, the church has members from almost every stratum of society. The Donnelley people say that they seldom see wider penetration for any company they analyze.

But it's not enough. The church has not made great penetration into any single cluster. For example, the church's greatest penetration is in cluster 25, Young Apartment Dwellers. Yet only .4 percent of that cluster belong to the church; more than 99 percent do not. And that is in the cluster in which we have the greatest penetration!

The task is staggering!

But the data also reveal good news about this task: church members are a great asset. Graph A shows that 16 clusters have Total Believer indexes above 120—in other words, 20 percent greater penetration than average. Graph B shows that all but two of these clusters have New Believer indexes above average. This indicates that Adventist members share their faith with their neighbors and friends. One of the great challenges for the ministry is to find ways to use members' witness and zeal more effectively.

The data also reveal two other conclusions:

1. Adventist Church growth among Hispanics is tremendous. Church leaders knew it was high, but few expected what Graph B shows: the two Hispanic clusters—clusters 36 and 46—have growth rates almost four times the average.

But despite this tremendous growth, we've only begun to scratch the surface. Only .3 percent of the people in cluster 36 are members of the church. Great possibilities lie ahead for the Hispanic work.

2. Growth clusters are very mobile. Our study found a strong correlation between the New Believer index and mobility. Tables 1-4 reveal this best. Tables 1 and 2 describe clusters where growth is high and the average Percent Moved is 54 and 56, respectively. Tables 3 and 4 describe clusters where growth is low and the average Percent Moved is 41 and 45, respectively.

This isn't surprising, since people who move to a new area are willing to make all kinds of changes — including a change in religion. Indeed, people who relocate may be searching for ways to make contacts and settle into their new surroundings, and a friendly, caring church provides an attractive means of establishing themselves.

Applying the data

What we've reported may be fascinating, but Harvest 90 demands that it also be relevant. Our research group offers two services that can help local pastors apply this data to the problems their churches and conferences face.

The first service analyzes the localities in the pastor's district to determine which ones contain the greatest number of people likely to join the church. Pastors or evangelists can then concentrate their limited resources of time and money on the these most promising areas. The Alabama experience, described in a box accompanying this article, illustrates how this service helps.

However, many pastors have only one town and need to know what entry events or pathway programs will meet the felt needs of the community. The research group can analyze their communities to determine what types of clusters are present. Then the research group will share with the local church in-depth profiles of those clusters. From these, the local church can project needs—and programs to meet those needs. This service is illustrated in the Chicago experience, described in the box on ' page 7.

The Institute of Church Ministry at Andrews University can provide both of these services and other custom-planning help as well.

The research our group has done will not produce baptisms by magic or hocus-pocus. And nothing reported here replaces trust in divine power. What we do suggest is a method of learning where and how the soil has been prepared. Marketing the Adventist Church is simply one tool among many for cooperating with the Holy Spirit more intelligently.


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Kermit Netteburg, Ph. D., now communication director for the Columbia Union Conference, was associate professor of communications at Andrews University when he wrote this article.

February 1987

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