Brand Loyalty
Where is your brand loyalty? In other words, what are your favorite brands?
Are you a Chevy truck enthusiast? Only buy New Balance athletic shoes? Insist In-N-Out has the best burgers in the world?
Or maybe your favorite brands are more aspirational: Porsche, Manolo Blahnik, or Piaget?
Just curious: did you think about your church or denomination when you thought of your favorite brands?
What Is a Brand?
Most people would not think of a church or a denomination as a brand, but they actually are. A brand is simply the collection of experiences and perceptions people have regarding a product, service, or organization.
Our new report Denominational Loyalty is from Grey Matter Research and Infinity Concepts. The study asks 820 American evangelical Protestant churchgoers how loyal they are to the denomination they attend (or to remaining non-denominational, if their church is not aligned with a denomination).
Denominational Loyalty
When it comes to denominational brand loyalty:
- 34% of evangelical churchgoers will only consider attending church in one specific denomination (or non-denominational)
- 43% have a specific denomination (or non-denominational) they prefer, but they will consider others as well
- 7% have a small number of denominations they would consider, with no particular favorite
- 9% would avoid some, but have none they would favor
- 8% do not factor denominations into their church choices
Evangelicals attending a non-denominational church and those who are part of a denomination are not radically different in their perspectives about brand loyalty.
Calvary Chapel or Colgate?
For comparison, we also explored how brand loyal evangelicals are to ten different types of consumer brands: soft drinks, shampoo, grocery stores, pain reliever, etc.
Fifty-seven percent of evangelical churchgoers are no more loyal to their denomination than they are to toilet paper brands. Sixty percent are no more loyal to their denomination than to soft drink brands; 61% than to toothpaste brands, and 66% than to brands of anti-perspirant or deodorant.
In fact, half of all evangelical churchgoers are more loyal to brands in at least one of the ten consumer product categories we tested. Only 8% are more loyal to their denomination (or non-denominational) than they are to brands in all ten categories.
But wait – there’s more!
Denominational Loyalty also explores how many churches and denominations evangelicals have attended, whether they switched denominations the last time they changed churches, and (believe it or not) what churches and denominations can learn from a beer brand.
There’s much more detail and nuance in the full report. Denominational Loyalty is free by request – just e-mail ron@greymatterresearch.com.
How Can We Help You?
Grey Matter makes reports such as this publicly available, but most of our work is for for individual clients.
What questions keep you up at night? What upcoming decisions would be made in a more informed manner if you knew what your donors, customers, and/or target market thinks about you? We answer these kinds of questions for companies, ministries, non-profits, denominations, and the agencies and consultants which serve them.
How can we help you?
We have A Passion for Research That Makes a Difference. Talk to us about how we can make a difference for you.