Understanding the Served Market: A Study on Rural Residents’ Awareness of Services Provided By the Local Church
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Due to the decline in church membership over the last five decades, more and more churches have considered using a marketing approach to better understand church members as customers and thereby provide services and facilities that are appropriate for their church members (target audience). This study was conducted in the City of Big Rapids, a rural area of Michigan. Its purpose is to understand rural community members’ awareness of the services and facilities their local church offers in order to identify appropriate marketing strategies for this church to approach and serve their target audiences in the near future. Although 839 local residents completed the questionnaire survey, only about 36% of the respondents reported having heard of the church. While some respondents were unaware of many of the services made available by the church, those who believed that the church had had a strong impact on the community were more likely to recommend its services to others. Furthermore, senior respondents (age 55 and above) tended to believe that the church had affected the community. In addition to that, most of the younger respondents (age 18 to 54) also identified themselves as non-churchgoers. This study not only provides guidance to the local church administrators in identifying marketing approaches to serve their target audiences, but can also be treated as a model for other rural churches, as building a strong relationship with local residents that can lead to gaining more church members in the long term. Keywords: aging church participants, church advertising and promotion, church marketing research, rural churches, residents’ awareness of church services _____________________________________ Comprendre le marché desservi : une étude sur la sensibilisation des résidents ruraux aux services fournis par l'église locale En raison du déclin du nombre de membres d'église au cours des cinq dernières décennies, de plus en plus d'églises ont envisagé d'utiliser une approche marketing pour mieux comprendre les membres d'église en tant que clients et ainsi fournir des services et des installations adaptés à leurs membres d'église (public cible). Cette étude a été menée dans la ville de Big Rapids, une zone rurale du Michigan. Son objectif est de comprendre la sensibilisation des membres de la communauté rurale aux services et aux installations offerts par leur église locale afin d'identifier les stratégies de marketing appropriées pour que cette église approche et serve ses publics cibles dans un proche avenir. Bien que 839 résidents locaux aient répondu au questionnaire d'enquête, seulement environ 36% des répondants ont déclaré avoir entendu parler de l'église. Alors que certains répondants n'étaient pas au courant de la plupart des services offerts par l'église, ceux qui pensaient que l'église avait eu un impact important sur la communauté étaient plus susceptibles de recommander ses services à d'autres. De plus, les répondants âgés (55 ans et plus) avaient tendance à croire que l'église avait affecté la communauté. En plus de cela, la plupart des répondants plus jeunes (âgés de 18 à 54 ans) se sont également identifiés comme n'allant pas à l'église. Cette étude fournit non seulement des conseils aux administrateurs d'églises locales pour identifier des approches marketing pour servir leurs publics cibles, mais peut également être considérée comme un modèle pour d'autres églises rurales, en établissant une relation solide avec les résidents locaux qui peut conduire à gagner plus de membres d'église à long terme. Mots-clés : participants de l’église vieillissants, publicité et promotion de l'église, recherche sur le marketing de l'église, églises rurales, sensibilisation des résidents aux services religieux
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.005 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".