Have you ever wondered how exactly would someone find out which parts of a city or even a state is more religious than another? As an Internet enthusiast I always figure there is some help rendered for such research in any walks of life from websites. The one particular topic I chose to write for this article is how to find out which locality is good for targeting your website advertisements. Here I am taking one Christian Book Store as an example to drive the point. The popularity of books in a particular topic is based on two factors, the segments popularity and the quality of the book. This is based on my own lexicon. The First is how popular Christianity is as a topic to read at this particular time. The second is more of a wider scope as it has the keyword "Quality", some of it is author's popularity (!?), title name, topics covered, the style and language. This is what makes a book, a high quality piece of "Marketing Material". Don't be offended when I tell a book is a Marketing Material. The targeted audience is booksellers and distributors plus you as a person who like to understand how well your community can be gauged against the religious meter.

Well how exactly do these online stores help in this aspect? Do you know that this demographics data is the vital marketing tool in the hands of the distributors? Any good store willing to stand on for a long time rather than be a shooting star "Wowed" for a second and then diminishes into the oblivion, would invest time in studying their customers. They are just looking at where you are from, have you seen lately that folks collect atleast your Zip code when you purchase items. This is exactly what I am talking about. They use this information to figure out where the readers are from and where to add more marketing dollars or strategically improve their inventory in the right stores. This is "very very very" localized data, unless you are a big chain you are not going to get this vital stats correctly for a larger demography. This is where the websites are more powerful than their brick and mortar counterparts. They get to see a wider audience, and do you know that the popular item that sells is books through online shops. These are relatively easy to pack and ship without worries about much damage. The online stores also get the information about demographics for free. How you ask? Well you got to provide the shipping address to get the book in the first place and this is what makes the online store powerful than the one in your street corner. There are many uses to this data, which needs a separate book to be written about so let's get back to the core of this article. One of the uses is to gauge the popularity of a religion in particular regions, for example Christianity in bay area. This information is available from any remote corner of the world. This popularity is useful to target the marketing dollars to that zone rather than elsewhere.

This is also useful data for the customer, I don't know whether you will be allowed to see the data or you will purchase such data. But you will enjoy much steeper discounts where there are more folks interested in religion and the warehouses are stocking more books of the same type passing on volume discounts for the customers. The point I am trying to make is rather than go to the corner shop you may be well off browsing through the collections offered by online stores. This allows you to comparison shop against your local store. If the offer in Internet is less than your local store then chances are that your religion is not so popular in that locality. This article deals in an interesting topic for doing further research if you are a marketing buff or a savvy customer. I have a sample website in the resource box which can kick-start your research.

For good pointers to interesting resources in christian books, christian book store, discount christian books, christian web sites visit http://www.1st-christian-book-store-and-gifts.com. "Permission is granted to reprint this article as long as the article is re-printed in its entirety and all links are left intact."