Abstract:
Religious organisations, particularly charismatic churches have resorted to marketing
communication activities in the competitive environment. Given this competition, there
are concerns about how churches could sustain their existence and operations especially
with the emergency of many new religious groups. Consequently, research that
provides insight into branding and advertising of churches including charismatic
churches has become important to academic and marketing communication
practitioners. This study attempted to address this gap by exploring the advertising
strategies used by Perez Chapel International and the Qodesh Family Church in
branding their identities and images to position their churches to audiences using
qualitative research and approach and multiple case study. Underpinned by Kapferer’s
Hexagonal Identity Prism and brand position theory, this study adopted a qualitative
research approach using interviews and document analysis to collect data to analyse
how Perez Chapel International and Qodesh Family Church utilise advertising
strategies in branding their charismatic churches. The findings provide support for the
churches’ brand service identities, which comprises of six facets: physique, personality,
relationship, reflection, culture, and self-image. In ascertaining the purposes and how
advertising strategies are deployed by the two charismatic churches, this study revealed
that Perez Chapel International (PCI) and Qodesh Family Church (QFC) used various
marketing communication activities especially advertising to promote their brands,
which reflect models and practices. The findings show that Perez Chapel International
(PCI) and Qodesh Family Church (QFC) used similar approaches, strategies, and
channels in positioning their brands to attract many stakeholders especially congregants
to their churches. However, the two churches have to improve their marketing and
advertising efforts in professional ways given the springing up of many new churches
in Ghana to uniquely distinguish in situations to maintain share of audiences.
Description:
A thesis in the Department of Strategic Communication,
School of Communication and Media Studies, submitted to the School of
Graduate Studies in partial fulfilment
of the requirements for the award of the degree of
Master of Philosophy
(Strategic Communication)
in the University of Education, Winneba