Marketing, religione e Famiglia Cristiana

The article explores some of the forms that the marketing-religion relationship has taken over the past twenty years by analyzing a wide sample of advertisements published in Catholic magazine Famiglia Cristiana, one of Italy’s largest-circulating weekly. The study employs content analysis to categorize the sampled advertisements based on the ways in which the religious and the commercial mix together, sometimes in harmony and sometimes in tension, throughout the recent history of this popular magazine. The findings reveal a variety of interaction dynamics between marketing and religion, ranging from mutually beneficial relationships (e.g. ads for sacred texts and religious merchandise) to peaceful coexistence (e.g. ads for pilgrimages and commercial advertisements respectfully using religious references) to open conflict (e.g. ads containing sexual references or underscoring luxury and hedonist motives), and their patterns of occurrence over time.