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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

September 25, 2007 edition of

The FOSTER Letter—Religious Market Update

Not Your Grandfather’s E-Book Amazon will soon unveil the Kindle, an electronic book reader priced at $400 to $500 that wirelessly connects to an Amazon e-book store without a computer. Also Google plans to start charging users for full online access to digital copies of books. Publishers will set the prices for their own books and share the revenue with Google. Until now only limited excerpts of copyrighted books have been available. Publishers seem to be preparing for the kind of disruption that hit the music business and have accelerated the conversion of their titles into electronic formats. Barnes & Noble’s Stephen Riggio argues that for most people the value of traditional paper books will never be replicated in digital form. Nevertheless, he plans to compete for e-book market share. (NY Times 9/6/07) 

Offline Influence on Online search yields 39% conversion finds a JupiterResearch study. 67% of the online searchers are driven by offline channels. This conversion rate suggests a synergistic relationship exists between search and offline channels. TV and word of mouth are the top two offline influencers. (Center for media Research 9/6/07) 

Psychiatrists are less likely to be religious than other types of doctors, reports the journal Psychiatric Services. 39% of all doctors are Protestant, 22% are Catholic and 13% Jewish. Among psychiatrists, 27% are Protestant, 10% are Catholic, and 29% Jewish. While 10% of all doctors have no religious affiliation, 17% of psychiatrists have none. 33% of psychiatrists view themselves spiritual but not religious vs. 19% of other doctors. Religious patients may have difficulty finding a like-minded psychiatrist. (Christian Post 9/4/07) 

Trend Watching is about observing and understanding what’s already happening, the major and the minor, the mainstream and the fringe. In our case, in the consumer and Christian ministry/business arena. While spotting and tracking trends, please remember that not everything applies to everyone, and that virtually every trend has its anti-trend. Furthermore, the new doesn’t always kill the old. I can help you identify current trends and how they are likely to impact your organization. 419-238-4082, gary@garydfoster.com or www.GaryDFoster.com. (Trendwatchers 9/5/07) 

Exposed The typical American is exposed to more than 1,000 messages each day. Allowing for 7 hours of sleep, that is nearly 60 messages every hour. (Non-Profit Times 9/4/07) 

Consumer Value is the cornerstone of any marketing challenge and yet many marketers fail to recognize that today’s shoppers are becoming ever more selective, seeking ever more value, and that reaching them in stores calls for some added-value dimensions observes Coca-Cola’s Joe Tripodi. More than at any other time in history, shoppers in today’s online era may be well educated about a product or service before they even reach the store. Shoppers want the retailer to better understand who they are and what they need. It’s not about selling just a product, but about products that include all components of the value equation (price, quality, time and convenience) to better fit the shoppers’ lifestyle. (Advertising Age 9/5/07) 

Content Searchers The primary role of the Internet has shifted from communications to content according to the Online Publishers Association. A dramatic shift has taken place between ’03 and ’07, with consumers now spending 47% of their time with content and only 33% with communication. Visiting for content has increased 37%. (Center for Media Research Brief 8/24/07) 

Leading Indicators Every business and ministry must identify their “Top 10 Leading Indicators”—those critical activities and results that must be ruthlessly measured. The Top 10 List requires board, CEO and senior team buy-in. Columns on the one-page report will show the weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual goals—with actual results and variances against the goal for those reporting periods. I can help you identify yours. Contact me at 419-238-4082, gary@garydfoster.com or www.garydfoster.com. (John Pearson’s Your Weekly Staff Meeting 9/18/07) 

Cyber-Slackers A Reuters report finds that employees on average spend about 20% of their time at work not working. A Salary.com survey found 6 in 10 workers admitted to wasting time at work, while 34% listed the Web as the leading time waster. An Australian study found that roughly one-third of employee emails were not related to work. Boredom, long hours, being underpaid and a lack of challenge were listed as the main reasons. (Reuters 8/29/07) 

Americans are Leaving Home earlier and earlier to get to work on time. Census data claims in ’06 1 in 8 workers were out the door by 6 a.m. up from 1 in 10 in ’00. That is more than 2.7 million additional drivers or a total of 15 million on pre-dawn patrol. Public transit commuters have remained stable at 6.7 million since ’00. “Commuting creep” affects everything from the breakfast-food industry to TV viewer-ship trends, from traffic-signal timing to newspaper delivery times, from carpooling patterns to personal daily devotion routines. Early commutes also are altering workers’ relationships with their families. (USA Today 9/12/07) 

More Firstborns are CEOs A USA Today study finds 43% of CEOs were born first, 23% born last and 33% landed somewhere in the middle. Other studies confirm more CEOs are firstborns than any other birth order rank. Why? CEOs themselves say it’s due to a stew of factors including their parent’s undivided attention, at least for a time. They felt the pressure of greater expectations and were forced to become self-sufficient because they had to look after younger siblings while not having an older sibling looking out for them. Firstborns are often more extroverted, confident, assertive, authoritarian, dominant, inflexible, conformist, politically conservative, conscientious, task-oriented, disciplined, defensive about errors, and fearful of losing position and rank. Firstborns learn parental skills in childhood, such as offering encouragement and setting limits, skills valuable to CEOs. Many first-born CEOs say they have more intelligent siblings, but they don’t always have the business drive. (USA Today 9/4/07) 

Homeschooling Experts estimate homeschooling has been growing at 7% to 12% annually, with perhaps more than 2 million students being taught at home today. (CitizenLilnk.com 9/5/07) 

Parents of Teens rank the most challenging issues facing their teens as peer pressure (42%), performance in school (16%), substance abuse (16%) and behavioral issues (15%). The only other significant issues are values development (6%), college choices and acceptance (5%), attitude (5%) and media use (5%). Only 3% listed teen’s faith as a serious challenge. George Barna notes that the number of young people plagued by peer pressure issues more than doubles when a child reaches high school. (Barna Group 9/10/07) 

Facebook With Wrinkles Social networking sites for boomers are popping up all over. They have names like Eons, Rezoom, Multiply, Maya’s Mom, Boomj, and Boomertown. The older demographic is expected to hang around a favorite site longer than fickle teens. Social networking has so far focused mainly on businesspeople and young people because they are tech-savvy but there three times as many boomers as teens. The number of Internet users who are older than 55 is roughly the same as those who are aged 18 to 34. (NY Times 9/12/07) 

Girls Suicide Rate Up A sharp jump in the rate of suicide among pre-teen girls and teens between ’03 and ’04 drove an increase in the overall teen suicide rate, reports the CDC. Hanging and suffocation replaced guns as their preferred method. After a 28.5% decline for 10-24s between ’90-’03, rates jumped 8% in ’04, the largest spike in 15 years. In girls 10-14 the rate rose 75.9%, in young women 15-19 it was up 32.3% and up 9% in .males 15-19. (USA Today 9/6/07) 

Men The top reason why the church doesn’t reach men is a lack of interest in religion, finds a survey by United Methodist Men. Respondents also listed “societal emphasis on individualism/materialism” and “distrust of organized religion.” Despite this, 86.5% of United Methodist men attend church almost every week and 65% are involved in small groups. 50% say they have a strong connection to their congregation that is growing stronger and 75% use a devotional at least several times a week. Yet, while men show a commitment to church, the study reveals they’re getting little support. Only 27.2% of the men have a close male friend that knows or supports them and 68% say the senior pastor could do more to support men in the congregation. (The Christian Post 9/20/07) 

Cool On Warming 51% of the nation’s 95 million born again adults view global warming as a “major” problem and 42% assign the issue less importance, while 7% are not sure. Evangelicals perceive global warming very differently than any other slice of the population - and they view the issue with significant skepticism. Among evangelicals, just 33% say the issue is a major challenge vs. 55% of non-evangelical born again Christians. Evangelicals are the least concerned segment among more than 50 population groups studied. (Barna Update 9/17/07) 

Super Light British scientists have been refining the use of “the world’s brightest light” to scan documents--including fragile, ancient scrolls--without having to unfold them. If the system works, it could eventually be used to decipher unopened parts of the Dead Sea Scrolls. In a few years the technique may be capable of imaging the pages of unopened books, allowing facsimiles of such fragile documents as original scores by Mozart and Beethoven. (TimesOnline.uk 9/13/07) 

Donor Insight Typically donors give to as many as 10 or more organizations over any 2-year span. 67% of active and 68% of lapsed donors will stop contributing to a nonprofit (NPO) that fails to deliver on their expected service qualities. Another 14% of active and 13% of lapsed donors decrease giving based on a shortfall in these qualities. 1 in 5 donors cite “failure to express their thanks and gratitude for my contribution” as a reason for lapsing — and more than 35% as a reason for decreasing their gifts. Active donors are even more passionate about gratitude: 36% will stop, and 24% will decrease giving, if an NPO fails to express thanks. 33% of active and 50% of lapsed donors will stop giving if an NPO uses guilt and manipulation to motivate you to donate. (Excerpted from The Disappearing Donor, by Dr. Dale Berkey, Doug Brendel and Dirk Rinker, DonorSpeak 9/07) 

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