Marketing by the Rules: Exploring Modern Monastic Business Practices in the Perspective of Religious Rules and Traditions

This research focuses on marketing practices of Benedictine monasteries. These communities make marketing decisions with respect to the products they make and sell, as well as their retailing and retreat businesses. These provide a setting for an examination of the role that marketing decisions play in raising funds to support one the world’s oldest nonprofit causes, that of religion and religious organizations. In addition, this study also provides a unique setting for examining how the role of religion as interpreted by religious rules for living and religious tradition affect marketing decisions. Exploratory investigation of this previously un-researched area helps to shed light on nonprofit marketing in religious settings, one of the lesser developed streams of nonprofit marketing research. Further, it also integrates the role of tradition, history and religious (highly mission related) directives into marketing decisions. The Rule of St. Benedict, written sometime close to 500 A.D. still governs the behavior of the largest group of monks and nuns. Testing reveals that “The Rule” still has a major effect on the marketing choices made in the monasteries but qualitative and other data demonstrate the variety of interpretations.