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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

March 25, 2007 edition of

The FOSTER Letter—Religious Market Update

Marriage—The New Luxury U.S. married couples with children now occupy fewer than 1 in 4 households, half what it was in 1960 and the lowest ever recorded by the Census Bureau. As marriage with children becomes an exception rather than the norm, social scientists say it is also becoming the self-selected province of the college-educated and the affluent. The working class and poor increasingly steer away from marriage, while living together and bearing children out of wedlock. The culture is shifting, and marriage has almost become a luxury item. As cohabitation and out-of-wedlock births rise among the broader population, social scientists predict marriage with children will continue its retreat into relatively high-income exclusivity. (Washington Post 3/4/07) 

Crowded Loneliness At a recent small groups conference at Saddleback Church Randy Frazee spoke on the “call to community.” He reported the average American family manages 35 separate relationships on a day-to-day basis—children, extended family, neighbors, government, school, friends, work, Starbucks employees, landlords, telemarketers, etc. And this is before that family gets invited to church, which usually adds another 6 or more connections. He refers to this phenomenon as “crowded loneliness.” We are in desperate need of meaningful relationships, yet too busy and too pulled to maintain them. Even worse, our attempts to relieve our sense of isolation often contribute to our fragmentation. We might join a small group, for example. We’ll get in contact with 3 to 11 other dedicated Christians and commit to meet and study the Bible every week. Now those 3 to 11 people become another chunk of relationships that we have to manage. Relationships that carry a cost in time, energy, emotion…even dollars. In other words, our attempts to forge meaningful relationships often add up to being “just another thing to do.” (Out of Ur 2/27/07) 

The New Golden Rule for business, first developed by Fred Reichheld, loyalty expert and author, is the one statistic that increasingly is taken most seriously by investors. Originally dubbed the Net Promoter Score, it could also be called the Customer Evangelism Score. It may be the most revealing question any business, ministry or church can ask its constituents. So what is this measure of success? Would you recommend us to a friend? I can help you find appropriate ways to ask this question to your customers and constituents. Contact me at 419-238-4082, GFosterCns@rmi.net or www.GaryDFoster.com. (The Gospel According to Starbucks, Leonard Sweet, WaterBrook, 2007) 

Religious Literacy Just as schools teach reading, writing and arithmetic, Boston University’s Stephen Prothero thinks religion ought to become the “4th R” of American education. He notes although 90% of people in the U.S. claim they are Christian, only a few know anything about religion. Only 10% of American teens can name all 5 major world religions while 15% cannot name even one. About two-thirds of  adult Americans believe the Bible holds the answers to all or most of life’s basic questions, yet, only half can name one of the 4 gospels and most do not know the first book in the Bible is Genesis. Prothero stresses the importance of having at least a general knowledge of religion to better confront the domestic and foreign challenges facing the U.S. (Religious Liberty, Stephen Prothero, Harper Collins, 2007) 

Copier Risk Now, experts are warning that photocopiers could pose an identity risk because most digital copiers manufactured in the past 5 years have disk drives (like computers) to reproduce documents. Data that has been copied can be retrieved unless the copier’s is protected with encryption or an overwrite mechanism, but very few are. (TheAge.com.au 3/14/07) 

Kids Are Buying Books in quantities we’ve never seen before reports Booklist magazine. Credit a bulging teen population (30 million plus), a surge of global talent and perhaps a bit of Harry Potter afterglow. Teen book sales rose 25% between ’99 and ’05. Fantasy and graphic novels are especially hot, and adventure, romance, humor and gritty coming-of-age tales remain perennial favorites. Yet the National Assessment of Educational Progress reports 12th-graders’ reading scores are virtually unchanged since ‘02. The teens who are reading welcome the growing sophistication of young adult literature. Teens have a lot of disposable income, and they’re willing to spend it on books. (Seattlepi.com 3/8/07) 

Women Sleep Deprived A National Sleep Foundation study finds the majority of American women are continually sleep deprived, either because of young children, biological changes (pregnancy and menopause), stress or pets. The impact on families, personal and professional lives, and society is enormous. The lack of sleep causes them to be late to work, experience high stress, feel depressed or anxious, forego exercise, be too tired for sex, drive while drowsy and have little time for personal or family relationships. Most acute among working moms, the primary cause is their efforts to “do it all” (fulfill all their work, childcare, family and spousal responsibilities). Biological changes complicate matters further. They average only 6 hours in bed per night. (UCSF News 3/6/07) 

Pound For Pound online video audiences are more valuable than TV audiences, given that video audiences are more contained and engaged in what they’re doing, but this comes at the expense of TV’s massive reach. A recent Ad Federation study finds leading ad executives expect a large share of their advertising budgets over the next few years, originally slated for broadcast and cable TV advertising, to shift to online video buys. (Online Media Daily 3/6/07) 

Markets Always Change in response to cultural, economic and political forces. A marketer’s dominance in one period is never assured in the next period, no matter how strong its brand. Look at GM and Ford. Yet it is the nature of dominant competitor’s to move cautiously to adapt to new market conditions. They do not easily relinquish “proven” formulas that produced so much success. Furthermore, the management, operations and marketing skills that are wed to those formulas run deep within a dominant competitor’s organization, reinforcing internal resistance to change. It’s human nature to become enamored with the trappings of dominance. This opens the door for smaller players who are more in tune with the changing market and able to respond more nimbly. Often only an outsider can bring enough objectivity to see this subtle “killer arrogance.” I can bring you that objectivity. Contact me at 419-238-4082, GFosterCns@rmi.net or www.GaryDFoster.com. (Internet Retailer 3/07) 

It’s About Relationship According to the Stanford Research Institute, the money made in any endeavor is determined only 12.5% by knowledge, and 87.5% by your ability to deal with people. 68% of customers quit shopping with you because of an attitude of indifference toward them by an employee. These same principles apply to any church. (The Winning Attitude, John Maxwell, Nelson Books, 1996)  

The Average American Worker admits to frittering away 2.09 hours per day, not counting lunch and scheduled break time, finds a Salary.com survey. Personal Internet surfing is the most frequent time waster for 44.7% of workers followed by co-worker socializing (23.4%) and conducting personal business (6.8%). Employers have estimated the loss of about an hour a day, so the extra unproductive time adds up to $759 billion annually in salaries for which companies get no apparent benefit. (C/net news 9/5/05) 

Audio Books 8,970 new spoken-word audio titles were published in ‘06, down from the most recent 5-year average of 10,900, reports Bowker. 202,111 audiobook titles have been released since the introduction of the format, and 40% of those have been published since ‘00. Adult mystery and suspense are the most popular category, with almost 5 times as many releases as romances, sci-fi, fantasy and westerns. Juvenile literature was the 2nd most popular category, accounting for 14% of new titles while religious and inspirational titles, ranked 3rd and accounted for 12%. Audiobooks account for less than 5% of all books in print. (Christian E-tailing 3/12/07) 

Lucado Steps Down Due to health reasons, author Max Lucado, 52, is stepping aside as Sr. Pastor of Oak Hills Church, San Antonio but plans to continue writing a least one book a year. Lucado, whose books have sold more than 40 million copies, is suffering from a heart arrhythmia but is confident the condition can be treated. (Christian e-tailing 3/15/07) 

The National Council of Churches’ Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches 2007 reports that membership in the 25 largest U.S. church bodies grew by 0.82% in ‘06, totaling 149,222,807 people. (Yearbook of American & Canadian Churches 2007) 

Ad Spend Decline Continued fragmentation of media and the expansion of advertising media options, particularly in the digital realm, have created a “supply and demand imbalance” in the market. This has constrained media’s ability to raise prices. Overall, media spend figures also reflect advertisers’ shift into experimental digital media that are not yet tracked. Further, marketers’ shifting of dollars from traditional media to measured digital media is creating below-the-surface effects on overall budgets. (According to TNS Media Intelligence, Internet ad spend rose 17.3% in ‘06, to $9.8 billion, while TV rose 5.3%, magazines rose 3.8%, radio rose 0.3%, and newspapers declined by 2.4%). Major marketers have worked very hard to drive inefficiencies out of ad budgets, and they are getting greater productivity out of their budgets than in the past. Today a chief marketing officer has 2 options: increase the budget in the hope of increasing market presence and share, or let the budget savings drop to the bottom line. Many of the large marketers, driven by short-term financial considerations, are choosing to pocket that money, believing they can constrain marketing budgets without impacting results. (Marketing Daily 3/14/07) 

Bible Study Boom According to the International Coalition of Workplace Ministries in 2000, there were 79 books published about faith and work compared to 2,000 titles in the past 2 years. More workplace Bible studies is a key driver. (Christianity Today 3/07)  

Homeschoolers Welcome In ‘00, 52% of all U.S. colleges had a formal evaluation policy for homeschooled applicants. In ’04 that number had risen to 83% and during that time, 45% of colleges received more applications from homeschoolers. (The Christian Post 3/18/07) 

For information on how to become a subscriber to the entire 3-page Foster Letter---Religious Market Update, E-mail us at: subscribe@garydfoster.com