Dajia Mazu Pilgrimage – Study of heart-touching atmosphere

• Main Authors: Pei-chen Yu, 余珮甄
• Other Authors: Cou-Chen Wu
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2012
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/33028676926141267175

碩士 === 國立臺灣科技大學 === 管理學院MBA === 100 === Dajia Mazu Pilgrimage is one of the most important and time-honored events in Taiwanese tradition every year, which manifests the good deeds of human beings and pious religion, purifies the society, comforts Taiwanese people’s spirits. This religious celebration also attracts a tremendous amount of believers and successfully creates potential business markets for each nearby district adjacent to Dajia. With the influence of public media, the organizer strives to draw the public attention by high exposure on various media channels and further bring a huge crowd successfully which is rapidly increasing year by year. This study is aimed to probe the main factors of heart-touching atmosphere for the participants by qualitative interviews and further provide marketing strategies and recommendations for the organizer of the pilgrimage. Methods of ‘Text Analysis’ and ‘Interviews’ and ‘Participant Observation’ are implemented in this study to discover ten factors of the heart-touching atmosphere and further analysis of each factor will be provided. Ten factors include (1) ascetic practice/exhausted feet vs. fresh spirit (2) epiphany/metamorphosis (3) familiar stranger (4) wholehearted devotion (5) thanksgiving (6) efficacious prayer/peace (7) committed spirit to Mazu (8) volunteering/centripetal force (9) note exchange between god and god (10) see you next year, old friend. Conclusions and recommendations include (1) initial motivation; back-to-the-essence of religion (2) discovery of heart-touching moments (3) communication of media (4) education of believer (5) Religious power of Mazu from Mainland China to Taiwan, and from Taiwan to the whole world.