Frugal doesn’t mean ordinary: a religious perspective

Abstract

Purpose

Exchange is often identified as the primary role of marketing. Consumer behaviour literature, therefore, focuses on uncovering the characteristics of decision-making styles of individuals that embrace consuming. However, recent global economic crises have led consumers to become increasingly frugal. Approaching frugality from the religious perspective, this paper aims to identify the deep-level diversities of frugal consumers in their quality consciousness tendencies, rather than simply equating both frugality and religiosity to non-consumption.

Design/methodology/approach

In this paper, a counterintuitive model has been offered that includes the positive moderating effect of religiosity on the relationship between frugality and quality consciousness. Using structural equation modelling, this paper tests the proposed model using a unique sample of 413 adults.

Findings

This paper extends the knowledge in the consumer behaviour literature by providing empirical evidence that religiosity positively moderates the relationship of frugality to quality consciousness. Further scrutiny showed that at high levels of religiosity, frugality positively affects quality consciousness.

Originality/value

This paper offers new avenues of research by highlighting the importance of not equating frugality and religiosity to low levels of consumption and abstinence from consuming. The dynamic nature of the growing Islamic economy requires both the scholars and practitioners to comprehend the consumers’ consumption preferences in markets where religious beliefs and frugality are well embedded into the culture. The paper sheds light on the literature pertinent to the examination of the relationship between frugality and religiosity by suggesting that the highly religious Muslim consumers’ frugality translates into quality consciousness.

Citation

Yeniaras, V. and Akarsu, T.N. (2017), "Frugal doesn’t mean ordinary: a religious perspective", Journal of Islamic Marketing, Vol. 8 No. 2, pp. 204-217. https://doi.org/10.1108/JIMA-06-2015-0046