Sales data reveals Christian retail channel strengths and potential, consumer spending habits

A new report on Christian book buyers' habits offers encouragement and growth opportunities for Christian retailers.

Despite the broadening of the market for Christian products in the last few years, Christian retail stores remain the single biggest channel for overall sales, according to data from the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association (ECPA).

Christian stores accounted for 33% of all Christian book purchases last year, ahead of the Internet (27%) and big box bookstores (26%). The ranking is revealed in the ECPA's 2009 Consumer Demographics & Buying Behaviors Annual Report.

Drawing from surveys of more than 44,000 book buyers, the second annual report of its kind added Bible sales data for the first time, looking at how categories fared in different channels and the varying purchase profiles of five groups of Christians, from "active" to "cultural" believers.

While Christian retailers claimed the largest share of total sales, the breakdown of categories found some variance. In fiction, the Internet led the way (32%), followed by big box bookstores (25%). Christian retailers ranked third, with 16% of the market.

For Bibles, they shared top spot with big box bookstores, each seeing 33% of sales ahead of the Internet (16%) and mass market stores (10%). Christian stores and the Internet each claimed 33% of non-fiction titles, followed by big box stores (22%).

"Active" Christians—those with high belief and high church involvement—were responsible for 61% of all purchases, followed by professing (16%), liturgical (12%), private (6%) and cultural (5%) Christians.

Including purchases of all books, Christian and other, "active" Christians spent 16% of their book budget at a Christian store—compared with the national average of 3%. Meanwhile, "professing" Christians—those with high belief but moderate church involvment—bought 25% of Bible (actives, 47%), 17% of fiction (actives, 64%) and 12% of nonfiction (actives, 66%).

The fiction findings pointed to the growth in the genre and "the overall market's receptivity to the category," said Michael Covington, ECPA's information and education director. "Outside of the Christian retail sector, Christian fiction makes up a larger, proportionate share of titles, meaning greater visibility."

The Bible sale data was "insightful," he added. "That the household income for the largest segment of Bible buyers was less than $25,000 and more Bibles are purchased in stores than online—by a large margin—are revealing statistics.

"The most popular selling Bibles are under $10 per unit, but when you look at the average retail price of a Bible sold through Christian retail in 2009, it was in the neighborhood of $40. I think there are great opportunities related to channel-specific marketing of Bibles in the future."

Covington noted that price point is no longer a top motivator for buying, ranking fourth for purchases in all kinds of stores, second at Christian retail and not placing in the top five reasons at all for online consumers. Selection was the number one motivator for all in-store shoppers.

Among the other findings were:

• -Households making less than $25,000 per year purchased the largest number of Bibles when compared with all other income brackets.
• -Households with combined incomes between $50,000 and $74,999 purchased the most Christian nonfiction and fiction books.
• -Christian men bought noticeably fewer books than the national average.

The 24-page ECPA report was produced in partnership with R.R. Bowker, using information from the organizations' PubTrack Consumer service. It is available to ECPA members for $399 and to non-members for $599.

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