Premium
The Importance of Brand and Competition in Defining U.S. Religious Markets
Author(s) -
Goff Brian,
Trawick Michelle W.
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
southern economic journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.762
H-Index - 58
eISSN - 2325-8012
pISSN - 0038-4038
DOI - 10.1002/j.2325-8012.2008.tb00879.x
Subject(s) - competition (biology) , homogeneous , set (abstract data type) , economics , mathematics , ecology , combinatorics , computer science , biology , programming language
Economic analysis of religious participation has been pursued mainly assuming very homogeneous religious markets and using highly aggregated units of measure. Utilizing a county‐level data set, we explore the structure of U.S. religious markets and determine whether the impacts of the economic influences on religious participation are sensitive to the “brand” of religion chosen by consumers. We find that the directions of effects of wealth and death rates are largely independent of brand definition. However, the magnitudes of these effects along with the directions of effects of income, religious competition, and human capital are sensitive to brand. The impact of religious competition is particularly complex, with differences between “interbrand” and “intrabrand,” as well as extreme values where competition may be a defining feature of brand.