Religiosity, Relationships and Consumption: A Study of Church Going in Ireland

Business-to-consumer relationships have been over-conceptualised, but poorly understood in terms of the social factors that motivate or inhibit the development of such relationships. This paper seeks to integrate three streams of literature, buyer-seller relationships, social relationships, and religiosity and develops a framework in which declining levels of participation in organised religion may be conceptualised as a failing relationship, which has been partially superseded by commercial relationships. This study uses an existential phenomenological approach to explore the complementarity or substitutability of individuals' relationships based on religion with those based on consumption. A survey of a sample of active and lapsed churchgoers in Ireland found mixed evidence of commercial relationships acting as a substitute for traditional religious-based relationships.