The marketing of sacred goods:Interaction of consumers and retailers

In this paper we investigate the marketing of religious goods. In particular, we consider the activities of both consumers and retailers at the time of pilgrimage to saints’ tombs. Unlike most consumer goods, the meaning attributed to religious goods, or the process by which goods acquire sacred meaning, involves not only the good or the context, but also the marketers themselves. The marketers’ mediation process is intended to embed authenticity into the products or services they market; this authenticity is monotonically related to the retailer’s proximity to the consumer’s cultural world. Our conclusions suggest five different strategies of meaning transfer that retailers can adopt.