When a Taoist Temple Serves as a Seller and Believer Becomes a Buyer

Temples, churches, mosques, and synagogues, provide places for people to worship.However, the high degree homogeneity in Taoism has led many temples to separatefrom community-based patterns to expand their follower base and donations byincreasing the range of religious services. Lamp lighting is the most commonservice provided by ordinary Taoist temples in Taiwan. In numerous famoustemples, crowds waiting in line to register for lamp lighting year after year. Tounderstand the attitudes of worshippers toward the lamp stand decoration project foradding lamp items at a Taoist temple, this survey issued 1,200 questionnaires andobtained 960 in 2013, following exclusion of invalid questionnaires (the responserate was approximately 80 %). The questionnaire construction fully met internalconsistency for each survey item as well as reliability and validity below the normalvalue (Cronbach’s a value = 0.7).Research QuestionThe operating environment of Taoist temples is gradually taking the form of ahorizontal competition due to a high degree of homogeneity. Temples are switchingfrom religious organizations to ‘‘brand’’ businesses. The number of religious ritualshas been increasing to meet the demands of followers seeking the help of deities,particularly during the 2008 world economic crisis. Temple administrators areracking their brains to find ways to compete for profits, resulting in various newbusiness practices. This study proposes that Taoist deities are a temple’s brandK.-Y. Wang (&)