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RELIGION IN
ADVERTISING
A STUDY ABOUT CONSUMER PERCEPTION
SUBMITTED BY -

VAIDEHI BHAGAT
ROLL NUMBER – 1022
ROOM NUMBER – 24B
 TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. Background 3. Rationale 5. Objectives

2. Introduction 4. Literature Review 6. Data and Sample

9. Findings and
7. Methodology 11. Conclusion
Observation

8. Analysis 10. Recommendations 12. Limitations and

and Implications further Scope
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BACKGROUND

1. Advertisement could be defined as a process of communicating a piece of information about a certain good or
service with an intention to sell it.

2. Over centuries the face of advertisements has changed manifold. Starting from print, to radio, to television and
finally to web.

3. Many different theories have been developed and discovered regarding the same. Ex- Hierarchy of effects models
like AIDA, model of pursuation to name a few.
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INTRODUCTION

1. India is a secular nation. It cradles countless different religions in its lap. Religion and culture can be found deep
rooted in the heart of India. Indians are said to be overtly possessive and defensive when it comes to their religion.
And so, as and when an opportunity suits them, they are ready with their shields raging war against people who
intentionally or even unintentionally dare to speak against their culture and religion.

2. Seeing enormous potential of popularity as well as commerciality due to its controversial and emotionally
triggering nature, companies have seldom shied away from blatantly using Religion as a tool to sell their ideas and
products. From time immemorial, organisations have been seen going lengths to make sure their product catches
the attention of maximum target audience and using culture and religion is like hitting them below the belt to gain
some extra points. Much to Indian’s dismay, it is considered the easy way out.
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RATIONALE
Advertisements can greatly affect consumer behaviour. Companies by choosing to
use religion and religiosity in the process of ad making often put themselves in a
difficult spot. A lot of companies suffer due to the backlash they receive on
inclusion of religion and culture in the adverts posted or distributed by them.
History has been the witness of many such cases where the companies lost out on
percentage of sales and customer base drastically. The major reason so as to why
this happens is because most of the companies are still not unaware of what
customers actually want.. The aim of this paper is to fill this research gap so as to
help companies to adopt marketing and advertising practises in harmony with the
customer’s preferences to avoid unwanted clash and loss-making strategies on
companies’ part as well as making sure that consumer sentiments are not hurt.

LITERATURE REVIEW
Nisha Qureshi (April 2021)
in her blog “Religion in
advertising”, says people
don’t have a sense of
humour when it comes to
religion. She resented the
idea of resorting to Gods and
divinities to sell a product.
She also suggested that these
practices should be avoided.
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02
religion in advertising: Case-
Soumitra Karnik in her blog
(March 2021) said, “Religion
is the largest selling category if
put in a marketing term. While
we can keep debating that it is
a personal choice, especially in
a country like India where
faith rules over everything,
there are some brands and
companies that will quickly
cash in on it.”
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In her article ‘The role of
04
study on the “Batman” TV
commercial’, Maria Yousuf Daas (2018) in his
Cernat(April 2013) claims paper “How religion affects
that Advertising uses consumer behaviour;
religious symbols to get Consumer attitudes and
closer to audiences. She seasonal demand for
however did not dismiss the products” explained how
idea of using religion in customers boycott products if
advertisements completely. their advertising is not in line
with the beliefs and teachings
03
of their religion.
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LITERATURE REVIEW

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Fam et al.’s (2004) The paper is one of the most In another report by Michael McCarthy (April,
influential works that explored the relationship 2013) in The New York Times, it was concluded
between religion and advertising. In their global study, that using religion in advertising is a ‘high risk and
they found “statistically significant differences in high reward strategy’. It can generate some great
attitudes towards advertising based on belief intensity, feat if done right.
especially when used for controversial products.”
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STUDY OBJECTIVES

1. 2. 3. 4.
To study customer’s To investigate To study consumer’s To determine if
current attitude consumer reaction on use of considering use of
towards use of expectation in religiosity in religiosity as moral by
religion in context of religiosity promoting worship the customers, affects
advertisements. in advertisements material vs for other the purchasing
and to study its social causes. behaviour of such
relationship with age products.
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DATA AND SAMPLE

Demographics of the sample
Data has been collected from a sample of 220 repondents belonging to different parts of country
People of all age groups actively participated in the survey, majority of it being students community

AGE GROUP AREA

120 113

100 WEST BENGAL

80
Respondents belong
mainly to Kolkata
60

40 34 31

20
19 23
CHHATTISGARH
Respondents belong
0 mainly from Raigarh,
Below 18 18-30 30-40 40-50 Above 50
Raipur and nearby
Series1 villages
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DATA AND SAMPLE CONTINUE…

DEMOGRAPHICS OF THE SAMPLE
OCCUPATION
Retired 5
GENDER DISTRIBUTION
Teacher 4
Chart Title
Homemaker 10
MALE FEMALE
Business Owner 14

Professional 83 42%

Student 104 58%

0 20 40 60 80 100 120

Series1
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Research Methodology

Secondary data
Primary data
Softwares used collection
collection
MS Excel, R Studio, Jamovi Made use of previously
Survey conducted by
software have been used for available literature and other
circulating questionnaire
statistical analysis resources in this topic.
prepared in Google forms.
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Methodology continues….
• This dissertation has adopted descriptive research design.
• In this paper, a pragmatic philosophy has been adopted.
• Data collected was mainly quantitative, which will be further analysed using statistical tools. The survey
was conducted with 220 respondents in total regarding both types of questions, qualitative as well as
quantitative.
• The time horizon of this particular project is cross-sectional.
• Maximum number of respondents belonged to Chhattisgarh and West Bengal.
• Non-probability convenience sampling has been used for the purpose of sample selection.
• Under descriptive analysis, tools like mean, standard deviation has been used and under inferential
analysis Cronbach’s Alpha test, KMO test, Pearson’s correlation, regression, hypothesis and chi-square
test have been used
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RESEARCH ANALYSIS
INFERENTIAL ANALYSIS AND FACTOR ANALYSIS

Cronbach Alpha’s KMO’s Exploratory factor

reliability Test Analysis
Bartlett's Test of Sphericity

Scale Reliability Statistics

χ² df p

512 91 < .001
  Cronbach's α

scale 0.705

KMO Measure of Sampling Adequacy

  MSA

Overall 0.717
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RESEARCH ANALYSIS

Objective 1: Current attitude towards use of religion in advertisements

b) How will use of religious figures in the packaging of
a) If use of religiosity is moral and justified
a product affect purchase

Indifferent
Yes, always Sometimes
10%
Sometimes but Never
26%
30% with good
cause
Will purchase
33
%

Will avoid purchasing

0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140

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RESEARCH ANALYSIS CONTINUED…

Objective 2 : To investigate consumer expectation in context of religiosity in
advertisements and to study its relationship with age.
(b) What would be your suggestion to ad
designers and creative heads?

Stop making such ads

Keep making such ads
If made, they must be legally regulated

33%
55%

12%
 RELATIONSHIP WITH AGE
Chi-square test is a test measuring the level of
association between two components. Rather, chi-
square test is best suited for comparing acquired
χ² Tests
results with theoretically predicted results based
on hypothesis. In here, if the p value is less than
  Value df p
0.05 then we reject null hypothesis and conclude
χ² 34.2 12 < .001 that since there is less than 5% of possibility that
N 220     age does not affect consumer expectations. We
can hereby claim that age works as an important
factor for determining the type of expectations
consumers have with regard to use of religion in
advertisements.
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RESEARCH ANALYSIS CONTINUED..

OBJECTIVE 3: To study consumer’s reaction on use of religiosity in promoting worship
material vs for social cause

Do you find this ad offensive

Yes
No
Maybe
Don't want to comment
6%
41%
2%
51%
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RESEARCH ANALYSIS CONTINUED..

OBJECTIVE 3: To study consumer’s reaction on use of religiosity in promoting
worship material vs for social cause
Views on this advertisement
59

33 33
30
22 23
20

1 2 3 4 5 6 7
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RESEARCH ANALYSIS CONTINUED….

Objective 4: To determine if considering use of religiosity as moral by the
customers, affects the purchasing behaviour of such products.
 H : If consumers approve the use of religion in ads, they will buy the products featuring the same.
0

H1: If consumers approve the use of religion in ads, they will not buy the products featuring the same.

P-value Correlation coefficient

0.423442977 0.054236394

Conditions for accepting H0: p-value of the hypothesis must be less than 0.05. (Hence, we’ll reject H0 in this case)
These two variables can be concluded as positively correlated if the value of correlation coefficient is <1.

FINDINGS AND OBSERVATIONS
1. We found that 68.81% respondents
claimed that they often see ads
featuring religion and religiosity
2. It was also found that ads depicting
people from different religion
bonding together got a positive
response from almost 52% of
the respondents.
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3. It was found that use of
religiosity for spreading
social message also had
mix response.
4. In another part, it was found that
around 63.4% of respondents
chose to use social media as a
channel to express their
disgust/dissatisfaction
regarding ads.
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FINDINGS AND OBSERVATIONS

5. It was found 6. It was also 7. It is further observed that

that only 3% of found that considering use of
respondents will go respondents religion in advertisements
ahead and buy suggested that the moral and justified does
products featuring major issue is with not affect the purchasing
religious figures if the disposal of such behaviour of the
given an option. packaging as they customers. (The p-value
contained pictures was found more than 5%
of religious figures. and correlation
coefficient was also 0.05)
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FINDINGS AND OBSERVATIONS

Objective 1: Consumers find it moral and just to use religion occasionally, that too for
good cause but they also asserted that they will mostly avoid purchasing such
products that feature religion or religiosity in the packaging.
Objective 2: Consumers claimed that they do not want see use of religion for marketing
and advertising any product whatsoever and that advertisement designers/creators
should stop making such advertisements. It was also found that age influences the
kind of expectations people have.
Objective 3: Consumers had mixed responses regarding use of religion for advertising
both worship materials and other social causes.
Objective: 4 Consumer’s positive perception regarding use of religion does not affect
consumer’s purchasing behaviour.

RECOMMENDATIONS AND
IMPLICATIONS
Recommendations
• Religious sentiments should be taken
care of every single time.
• Lack of information and resources in
this field calls for much more
frequent consumer feedback and
queries to be taken.
• A separate committee needs to be
formed for regulation of these ads
that are delicate in nature.
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Implications
• Theoretical implication of this research
paper would be to provide basis for
further research.
• Practical implication of this paper
would be for the creative heads and ad
makers to take into consideration,
consumer’s perspective about
religiosity in ads to avoid damages
caused due to backlash and distasteful
opinions.
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CONCLUSION

With increasing competition, it is but obvious that companies and other big players in the market will try
to fight tooth and nail to grab as much consumer attention as possible. This often leads them towards
different creative paths to get successful.
While creativity is appreciable, this particular research paper has proved that advertisements featuring
religion, religiosity does not go well with consumers. They often find themselves expressing their
displeasure and even rage on these advertisements as well as questioning the basic need of using
religion.
Majority of respondents were of an opinion to stop using religion as a pawn to generate popularity, be it
from a positive or negative perspective. People had their concerns over crossing of that thin line of
decency and morality by the ad creators and media heads. Hence, the study is concluded with the idea
that Religion should be kept out of advertisements as a whole.
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LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY

● Data collected through sampling has a questionable reliability

● Literature related to the topic was sparsely available making it
difficult to draw out conclusion from secondary data available.
● It proved to be a sentistive topic for a considerable amout of
people. This also caused lack of number of respondents.
● There was a time constraint throughout the process of making
this project.
● Majority of respondents were youth. This also might create some
biasness in overall
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THANK YOU