Digital Marketing in Portuguese Religious Organizations

• Autor(a) principal: Figueiredo, Iúri Filipe Cardoso
• Data de Publicação: 2023
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.26/48954
• topic: Digital marketing; Digital marketing tools; NPOs; Religious organizations; Religious marketing

Digital Marketing has changed how organizations communicate with their audiences. The internet has become part of every consumer’s life, as they are increasingly online. Therefore, marketers taken marketing to the digital space through several digital marketing tools. However, Non-profit organizations (NPOs), including religious organizations, have been slow to adapt to this new way of communication. NPOs characteristics cause barriers which justify this delay. Religious organizations have specific characteristics which further difficult digital marketing usage. It is interesting, therefore, to study the adoption of digital marketing in the Portuguese religious context. For the present study, 10 of the main protestant religious organizations were interviewd. This purposive sample was used after a previous analysis of the digital space of religious organizations. However, others were contacted without previous knowledge about their digital presence. The findings showed that, although not every organization prioritizes digital marketing the same way, each organization uses digital marketing tools to some extent, with social media being the main digital marketing tool. The main difference between them is their objective: member maintenance or member acquisition. Overall, this study gives insights into the development of digital marketing in protestant religious organizations in Portugal, their perspectives, the reasons for not using it more intensively, the tools are being used, the objectives they have and the targets they are addressing.