RT Article
T1 Transforming Lives and Businesses: Spiritual Aspirations in Yoga Marketing
JF Implicit religion
VO 25
IS 3/4
SP 311
OP 336
A1 Augspurger, Jens U.
LA English
YR 2022
UL https://ixtheo.de/Record/1908121319
AB This article explores the aspirational marketing modalities promoted by "spiritual marketing coaches" (SMC) that target freelancers in the well-being and yoga sector. It focuses on the narratives of success applied in what is essentially a "marketing of marketing," analysing the semiotic qualities, functions, and implications of these promotional strategies. Specifically, it investigates how SMCs engage in meaning-making and religion-making through aspirational narrations while using inbound marketing to promote the use of the same. I argue that "spiritual marketing" incorporates a semiotic shift towards language and narrations commonly used in contemporary spirituality. This has introduced modalities that combine marketing tools with spiritual and esoteric doctrines via algorithmic processes, the spiritual exercise of bringing forward a business idea with purpose, and inner transformation for the sake of signalling authenticity. Promoting the esoteric paradigm that thought controls matter, "spiritual marketing" inadvertently relies on the appeasement of online marketing algorithms to attract more clients.
K1 Algorithms
K1 inbound marketing
K1 marketing coaching
K1 modern yoga
K1 netnography
K1 online marketing
K1 Self-development
K1 spiritual economy
K1 spiritual marketing coaches
K1 yoga economy
DO 10.1558/imre.27215