Spanish Muslims' halal food purchase intention

Abstract

For centuries, halal is a spiritual concept that Muslims continue to follow in their daily lives, specifically when purchasing and consuming products. The Muslim community takes up a big part of the world population. The demand for halal food consumption is increasing rapidly in line with the expansion of the Muslim community with 2.1 billion Muslims worldwide. Halal food becomes a profitable business not only among the Muslim majority countries, but also in countries where the majority are non-muslims. Viewed from an Islamic perspective, the concept of halal is vital to a Muslim. Halal means "allowed" or "permitted" in Islam). Therefore, Muslims will look for products in accordance with accepted religious teachings. This is marked by the number of demands in the world for halal products that already have a Halal certification. Halal appeal displayed in a product becomes a distinctive attraction and identity from similar products that become competitors. This becomes one of the more explorable product marketing tools. Countries with Non-Muslims as their majority are also showing tremendous positive demand trends. With this, the demand for halal food is also noticeable. The demand for halal food consumption is increasing rapidly in line with the expansion of the Muslim community with 2.1 billion Muslims worldwide. The 'Halal' concept has become a new trend in the consumer goods industry, especially with food, and is gaining more popularity. The reason behind it being the fact that the halal concept is not just a purely religious issue, it is now also in the dynamic of business and trade. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the factors that influence purchase intention of halal food among Spanish Muslim consumers. This study aims to tackle questions on the perception of Muslim consumers in Spain towards halal food, and the intention to purchase the halal products, we also take into account the moderating role of religious involvement. This study also observes the mediating role of the halal attitude towards halal" between "halal consciousness" and "purchase intention"; and the moderating role of "religious involvement" between " attitude towards halal" and "purchase intention". Last, this thesis also study the effect of “halal consumers’ attitude” as a moderating variable to measure both indirect and direct effects of some constructs on purchase intention. Data were obtained from a survey of Muslim consumers living in various religions of Spain, then analysed using the partial least squares (PLS) technique. The results showed that product awareness does not have an effect on purchase intention while other constructs do, including the mediating effect of consumers' attitude towards halal label and moderating effect of religious involvement. This study thus contributes to the advancement of knowledge on factors that motivate the purchase intention of halal food.