Consumer religiosity and shopping behavior: An exploratory study in Turkey

Abstract

For many devout believers, their faith is the main guiding principle, this includes purchasing and consuming attitudes, behaviours, and preferences. For example, Jewish people are very sensitive about “kosher” or “non-kosher” products. Likewise, most Muslim people express concerns regarding “halal” or “non-halal” products or services. Unfortunately, this quite salient aspect of religion, “consumer religiosity” seems to be one of the neglected or underrepresented themes in the psychology of religion literature. With this research, we intend to contribute to this area by exploring the effect of religiosity on consumers’ shopping attitudes and behaviour in Turkey. In addition to demographic background, three major constructs were measured in this study: religiosity, shopping attitudes, and halal shopping consciousness. Religiosity was measured using the modified version of Religious Commitment Inventory (RC-10) developed by Worthington et al. (2003). Shopping attitudes and behaviours were measured using the modified version of the Consumer Styles Inventory (CSI-22) developed by Sproles & Kendall (1986). Additionally, five questions were developed by the authors to measure halal shopping consciousness. Preliminary findings indicate that religiosity has a significant impact on the certain shopping attitudes and preferences: it correlates positively with quality preferences, negatively with brand consciousness and impulsive shopping attitude.