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The Foster Letter —

Religious Market Update

The FOSTER Letter is a bi-weekly e-mail religious market intelligence report targeted to Christian market channel and ministry leaders.  Each issue reports on news, trends, events and research that will directly or indirectly impact your audiences and businesses in a convenient summary format  Better informed leaders make better choices!

Researched, Edited & Published by Gary D. Foster

Excerpts from the

February 10, 2009 edition of

The FOSTER Letter—Religious Market Update

Path to Purchase Harris Interactive research finds shoppers consult an average of 4 information sources before making a purchase. The first sources people look to are: Search Engines (20%), Retail Stores (15%), Family/Friends/Co-Workers (15%), Retailer Website (9%), Multi-Brand Website, e.g. Amazon (9%), Print Media (9%), Product–Comparison Websites (8%) and Manufacturer’s Web Site (8%). No matter where they start, 67% of shoppers make their final decision in a retail store, 15% at an Amazon-like site and 10% through a retailer website. (AdWeek 1/19/09) 

Women are intensely policing family budgets today, finds a Miller Zell study. 45% of women are doing more online research than in the past and are enforcing greater levels of accountability from all family members. They are now making more joint shopping decisions and are being more selective and disciplined. Among the most common changes: eating in more often (68% spent less at restaurants); changing channels (50% moved from premium grocery stores to discounters) and trading down (87% switched grocery brands and 33% bought private-label clothing). (Media Post 1/14/09) 

Children of single parents have a 77% greater risk of being harmed by physical abuse, an 87% greater risk of being harmed by physical neglect, and an 80% greater risk of suffering serious injury or harm from abuse or neglect than children living with both parents. (Touchstonemag.com) 

Interim Executive Staff turnover happens¾and its rarely at the ideal time. Let me help you through those transition times. Let me be your interim executive to insure against costly workflow disruption. Contact 419-238-4082, Gary@garydfoster.com or www.garydfoster.com. 

Christian Bookstores’ share of business dropped significantly, in January, finds America’s Research Group. Slightly more than 6% of the population shopped at a Christian bookstore vs. 12.4% during the same time in ’08. Per capita spending in Christian stores reported in 1/09 was $4.58, compared to $9.53 a year ago. Almost 29% of Americans are buying only essential and on-sale items. (Americas Research Group 1/26/09) 

Out-of-Print No More British publisher Faber & Faber now lets readers order out-of-print books. Starting with a selection of 100 OP titles, Faber Finds uses specially designed software to generate print-ready covers unique for every title, without requiring expensive  intervention of graphic designers. Sold at prices comparable to regular trade paperbacks, titles have a production and delivery time of up to 2 weeks, and consumers can place orders online or through their local bookstore. The publisher plans to offer as many as 1,000 titles in 4 genres: fiction, non-fiction, art and poetry. (Trendwatching.com 1/5/09) 

Art for God The 4^th Annual International Christian Art Competition deadline has been extended to 2/28/08. Competition in every category is open to artists age 16 and up. For more visit www.artforGod.com. (Foster Network 1/09) 

Kindle Sells Physical Books Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos claims when people buy a Kindle, they continue to buy the same number of physical books as they did before. They also buy about 1.6 to 1.7 e-books for every physical book they buy. The Kindle Store now offers 230,000 titles. (Amazon.com 1/29/09) 

Children’s Products offer some bright hope to Christian product companies on an otherwise gloomy horizon. While sales in other categories faltered as ’08 ended, children’s books kept moving. ECPA data reveals shoppers were working hard to save, but still buying for their kids. Kids’ book buyers spent slightly less per book, but a bit more in total during each shopping visit. (Christian Etailing 1/26/09) 

Christianity is no longer viewed as the default religion in America. More than 50% of U.S. adults say Christianity is no longer the faith that Americans automatically accept as their personal faith. Previously, many assumed if one was born in America, then one would automatically be affiliated with the Christian faith. 64% of Evangelical Christians and 60% of Hispanics are the strongest supporters of the idea that Christianity is no longer the automatic religion of Americans. Still, 74% of Americans adults say their faith influences their moral judgments. (Barna Update 1/12/09) 

The Circuit City Lesson Retailers should view Circuit City as a cautionary tale. Media reports say the self-inflicted mortal blow occurred back in ’07 when the company fired 3,000 top-earning sales people as a cost-cutting measure. Customer service did more than disappear; it got hired by Best Buy. Deep cost cuts are tempting, but short-changing customer service could prove fatal. (Boomer Project 1/29/09) 

Boomers For the last 40 years, Boomers were the economic engine of retail, and they have naturally reached the stage of life, age 50 and beyond, where they are less interested in buying stuff and more interested in having inspiring life experiences. They are just now in that stage, and it happens to coincide with a long-lasting recession. (Boomer Project 1/19/08) 

Say It Straight In ‘04 the Grammy’s scored a respectable 26.3 million viewers. In ‘05 they fell to just 18.8 million, so this year’s 17 million should have come as no surprise. Anyone taking bets on next year’s audience? If you need advice about marketing in the new millennium, here’s all you really need to know: Say it straight…Say it real! I can help you decide how to do this best. Contact 419-238-4082, Gary@garydfoster.com or www.garydfoster.com. (Monday Morning Memo 2/20/06) 

Why Homeschool? A 2007 survey finds the most common reasons parents homeschool are: concern about the school environment, including safety, drugs or negative peer pressure (88%); desire to provide religious or moral teaching (83%); dissatisfaction with academic instruction at other schools (73%); “unschoolers” or parents who consider typical curriculums and standardized testing as counter-productive to quality education (65%); family time, finances, travel and distance (32%); special needs of a child—other than physical or mental—that schools cannot or will not meet (21%); and physical or mental health problems (11%). The percentage of parents who homeschool to provide religious or moral instruction grew from 72% to 83% between ’03 and ’07. (worldnetdaily.com) 

Women Pastors The 2008 Compensation Handbook for Church Staff reports 2.5% of senior pastors are women across all denomination, yet in churches where there is only one pastor, 6% are women. Interestingly, female pastors who are a church’s sole pastor are on average compensated 8.6% more than male sole pastors. Researchers concluded the reason was mainly regional. Solo pastors receive the highest pay in the New England and Pacific states, the higher cost-of-living regions. These regions also have the greatest cultural acceptance of solo women pastors. (Pastor’s Weekly Briefing 1/20/09) 

Customer Loyalty is founded upon the bedrock of trust. However, trust is not built with market segments nor with customer clusters, but with individuals. I can craft an individualized customer loyalty strategy for you. For more information, contact me at 419-238-4082, Gary@garydfoster.com or www.garydfoster.com. 

Stressed BIGresearch data finds Gen-Xers and Millennials are far more stressed out by life than their elders. What’s not so clear is why. One possibility is stress is related to a generation’s life-cycle stage, tied to the ravages of hormones or the roller coaster ride of alternating love and despair, or simply the learned ability to control one’s emotions. Another possibility is that Americans have developed increasingly fragile psyches over the successive generations. If so Millennials, whose parents nourished their self-esteem by never subjecting them to disappointment or failure, are less prepared to cope with hardship. Ed Note: My theory is that more Builders and Boomers have an active Christian faith to sustain them in life’s trials. (Boomer Project 1/29/09) 

The Consumer Product Safety Commission has issued a one-year stay of enforcement of newly added certification and testing requirements for manufacturer and importers of products for children. They note: “The stay of enforcement provides some temporary, limited relief to the crafters, children’s garment manufacturers and toy makers who had been subject to the testing and certification required under the CPSIA. These businesses will not need to issue certificates based on testing of their products until additional decisions are issued by the Commission.” Among the new regulations to which the stay does not apply are the ban on small parts effective for products made after 2/15/09. (Publisher’s Lunch 2/2/09) 

2009 CT Book Awards  Apologetics/Evangelism, The Reason For God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism, Timothy Keller (Penguin/Dutton).  Biblical Studies Stories With Intent: A Comprehensive Guide to the Parables of Jesus, Klyne R. Snodgrass (Eerdmans).  Christianity and Culture Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling, Andy Crouch (InterVarsity).

Christian Living Reconciling All Things: A Christian Vision for Justice, Peace and Healing, Emmanuel Katongole and Chris Rice (InterVarsity). The Church/Pastoral Leadership Why We're Not Emergent: By Two Guys Who Should Be, Kevin DeYoung and Ted Kluck (Moody). Fiction Home: A Novel, Marilynne Robinson (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux). History/ Biography Bill Bright And Campus Crusade For Christ: The Renewal of Evangelicalism in Postwar America, John G. Turner (University of North Carolina). Missions/Global Affairs Transforming Worldviews: An Anthropological Understanding of How People Change, Paul G. Hiebert (Baker Academic). Spirituality Acedia And Me: A Marriage, Monks, and a Writer's Life, Kathleen Norris (Penguin/Riverhead). Theology/Ethics People and Place: A Covenant Ecclesiology, Michael S. Horton (Westminster John Knox). (Christianity Today 1/30/09) 

Lives Unraveling Requests for therapists have soared, Americans say they’re stressed out, and domestic-violence and suicide hotlines are reporting increased calls. “I’ve never seen this level of anxiety and depression in 22 years of practice,” says Nancy Molitor, a psychologist in Wilmette, Ill. Even among those with jobs, the demand for therapists surged 40% from June to December (driven largely by money-related fears). Nearly half of Americans say they are more stressed than a year ago, and about a third rated their stress level as “extreme” just prior to the Wall Street dive, finds American Psychological Association surveys. More people are living in homes that are like tinderboxes; they blow up every once in a while. Calls to the National Domestic Violence Hotline were up 21% in September over a year ago. Concern is also rising about possibly higher rates of child abuse, which increases in tough economic times. (USA Today 2/1/09) 

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