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Guerilla Marketing Strategies of Neochurches in Cameroon

Received: 6 September 2020     Accepted: 23 September 2020     Published: 29 September 2020
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Abstract

The subject of this thesis is a phenomenon of guerrilla marketing, an innovative and unconventional form of marketing that emerged relatively recently and became a popular tool of marketing. In Cameroon there have been the opening of many new churches, especially the Pentecostal and evangelical churches who aim at the prosperity gospel. Neochurches are an offspring of the traditional churches with their leaders having a celebrity status and miracles, deliverance and prosperity their main market offerings. Most of these churches have not had significant growths in terms of membership as compared to the traditional churches. There are 89 religious denominations in Cameroon. Cameroon is you see so many churches opening and ending up w very poor membership growth and after 3 or 4 years they shut down. Also if new churches follow the various steps on how to attract a crowd and keep them as permanent members of their churches most new churches in Cameroon will excel in their numbers and membership. The main aim of this study to explore the marketing strategies used by these churches to win new members and keep existing ones and propose innovative marketing strategies to improve on their market position. The results from this exploratory study ahows that here is evidence to prove that all new churches need a good marketing plan to succeed and avoid stagnant growth or shutting down due to few membership in the churches. Marketing is necessary for all organizations both profit making and non profit making organizations and hence churches are not an exclusion. Most neochurches in Cameroon focus to pull a crowd to the Sunday services and special events like crusades and retain the existing members by overt signs of miracles, deliverance, testimonies of prosperity and inspiring massages. It is recommended that these Neochurches should exploit the social media as one of the simplest ways to win in members into their churches and also maintain a fragrant media presence.

Published in American Journal of Operations Management and Information Systems (Volume 5, Issue 3)
DOI 10.11648/j.ajomis.20200503.13
Page(s) 49-55
Creative Commons

This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, provided the original work is properly cited.

Copyright

Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Science Publishing Group

Keywords

Innovative Marketing, Church Business, Guerilla Marketing Strategies

References
[1] Belch George Eugene, Belch Michael A. 2014. Advertising and promotion: an integrated marketing communication perspective. McGraw-Hill.
[2] Clow E. Kenneth, Baack E. Donald 2018. Integrated Advertising, Promotion, and Marketing Communications. Prentice Hall.
[3] Curran, J. and J. Seaton, 2017. Power without Responsibility: Press and Broadcasting in Britain. 5th Edition Routledge, USA. pp: 432.
[4] Derbaix Christian M, Vanhamme Joelle, 2014. Inducing word-of-mouth by eliciting surprise -a pilot investigation. J Econ Psychology (24): pp. 99-116.
[5] Egan John 2017. Marketing Communications. Cengage Learning.
[6] Gallagher, B 2014. Guerilla marketing and branding. CA: Marketing Turkiye Press.
[7] Kotler Philips, Armstrong Gary, Saunders John, Wong Veronica 2011. Principles of Marketing. Financial Times/ Prentice Hall; 3 edition.
[8] Levinson, Jay Conrad 2018. Guerilla Marketing. Boston, New York. Houghton Mif-flin Company.
[9] Levinson Jay Conrad 2016. Guerrilla marketing: put your advertising on steroids. Morgan James publishing.
[10] Levinson Jay Conrad, Lautenslager Al 2019. Guerilla Marketing in 30 Days, Second Edition. Entrepreneur press.
[11] Tung Mao Tse, Mao Zedong, Griffin Samuel, 2018. On Guerilla Warfare. University of Illinois Press. Baker, Micheal the strategic Marketing Plan Audit 2008.
[12] https://appinstitute.com/church-marketing-ideas/.
[13] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Merrick_(missionary).
[14] https://emergingcameroonnow.blogspot.com/2013/08/list-of-approved-churches-in-cameroon.html.
[15] About AMA. American marketing association [online]. Available at: (retrieved 2020-04-10).
[16] The Origin of the Marketing Concept. Uriel.org [online]. Available at: (retrieved 2020-04-10).
[17] Types of guerrilla marketing. GuerrillaOnline.com [online]. Available at: (retrieved 2020-04-10).
Cite This Article
  • APA Style

    Francis Mbah Takwi, Bejanga Etonde Abene Sharon, Nchise Delphine Nchang, Kiven Cynthia. (2020). Guerilla Marketing Strategies of Neochurches in Cameroon. American Journal of Operations Management and Information Systems, 5(3), 49-55. https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ajomis.20200503.13

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    ACS Style

    Francis Mbah Takwi; Bejanga Etonde Abene Sharon; Nchise Delphine Nchang; Kiven Cynthia. Guerilla Marketing Strategies of Neochurches in Cameroon. Am. J. Oper. Manag. Inf. Syst. 2020, 5(3), 49-55. doi: 10.11648/j.ajomis.20200503.13

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    AMA Style

    Francis Mbah Takwi, Bejanga Etonde Abene Sharon, Nchise Delphine Nchang, Kiven Cynthia. Guerilla Marketing Strategies of Neochurches in Cameroon. Am J Oper Manag Inf Syst. 2020;5(3):49-55. doi: 10.11648/j.ajomis.20200503.13

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  • @article{10.11648/j.ajomis.20200503.13,
      author = {Francis Mbah Takwi and Bejanga Etonde Abene Sharon and Nchise Delphine Nchang and Kiven Cynthia},
      title = {Guerilla Marketing Strategies of Neochurches in Cameroon},
      journal = {American Journal of Operations Management and Information Systems},
      volume = {5},
      number = {3},
      pages = {49-55},
      doi = {10.11648/j.ajomis.20200503.13},
      url = {https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ajomis.20200503.13},
      eprint = {https://article.sciencepublishinggroup.com/pdf/10.11648.j.ajomis.20200503.13},
      abstract = {The subject of this thesis is a phenomenon of guerrilla marketing, an innovative and unconventional form of marketing that emerged relatively recently and became a popular tool of marketing. In Cameroon there have been the opening of many new churches, especially the Pentecostal and evangelical churches who aim at the prosperity gospel. Neochurches are an offspring of the traditional churches with their leaders having a celebrity status and miracles, deliverance and prosperity their main market offerings. Most of these churches have not had significant growths in terms of membership as compared to the traditional churches. There are 89 religious denominations in Cameroon. Cameroon is you see so many churches opening and ending up w very poor membership growth and after 3 or 4 years they shut down. Also if new churches follow the various steps on how to attract a crowd and keep them as permanent members of their churches most new churches in Cameroon will excel in their numbers and membership. The main aim of this study to explore the marketing strategies used by these churches to win new members and keep existing ones and propose innovative marketing strategies to improve on their market position. The results from this exploratory study ahows that here is evidence to prove that all new churches need a good marketing plan to succeed and avoid stagnant growth or shutting down due to few membership in the churches. Marketing is necessary for all organizations both profit making and non profit making organizations and hence churches are not an exclusion. Most neochurches in Cameroon focus to pull a crowd to the Sunday services and special events like crusades and retain the existing members by overt signs of miracles, deliverance, testimonies of prosperity and inspiring massages. It is recommended that these Neochurches should exploit the social media as one of the simplest ways to win in members into their churches and also maintain a fragrant media presence.},
     year = {2020}
    }
    

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  • TY  - JOUR
    T1  - Guerilla Marketing Strategies of Neochurches in Cameroon
    AU  - Francis Mbah Takwi
    AU  - Bejanga Etonde Abene Sharon
    AU  - Nchise Delphine Nchang
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    DO  - 10.11648/j.ajomis.20200503.13
    T2  - American Journal of Operations Management and Information Systems
    JF  - American Journal of Operations Management and Information Systems
    JO  - American Journal of Operations Management and Information Systems
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    EP  - 55
    PB  - Science Publishing Group
    SN  - 2578-8310
    UR  - https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ajomis.20200503.13
    AB  - The subject of this thesis is a phenomenon of guerrilla marketing, an innovative and unconventional form of marketing that emerged relatively recently and became a popular tool of marketing. In Cameroon there have been the opening of many new churches, especially the Pentecostal and evangelical churches who aim at the prosperity gospel. Neochurches are an offspring of the traditional churches with their leaders having a celebrity status and miracles, deliverance and prosperity their main market offerings. Most of these churches have not had significant growths in terms of membership as compared to the traditional churches. There are 89 religious denominations in Cameroon. Cameroon is you see so many churches opening and ending up w very poor membership growth and after 3 or 4 years they shut down. Also if new churches follow the various steps on how to attract a crowd and keep them as permanent members of their churches most new churches in Cameroon will excel in their numbers and membership. The main aim of this study to explore the marketing strategies used by these churches to win new members and keep existing ones and propose innovative marketing strategies to improve on their market position. The results from this exploratory study ahows that here is evidence to prove that all new churches need a good marketing plan to succeed and avoid stagnant growth or shutting down due to few membership in the churches. Marketing is necessary for all organizations both profit making and non profit making organizations and hence churches are not an exclusion. Most neochurches in Cameroon focus to pull a crowd to the Sunday services and special events like crusades and retain the existing members by overt signs of miracles, deliverance, testimonies of prosperity and inspiring massages. It is recommended that these Neochurches should exploit the social media as one of the simplest ways to win in members into their churches and also maintain a fragrant media presence.
    VL  - 5
    IS  - 3
    ER  - 

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Author Information
  • Faculty of Business Management and Sustainability, Information and Communication Technology University USA, Yaounde, Cameroon

  • Faculty of Business Management and Sustainability, Information and Communication Technology University USA, Yaounde, Cameroon

  • Faculty of Business Management and Sustainability, Information and Communication Technology University USA, Yaounde, Cameroon

  • Faculty of Business Management and Sustainability, Information and Communication Technology University USA, Yaounde, Cameroon

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