Muslim Consumers’ Attitude Toward Non-Muslim’s Halal Food Operators: Evidence from Malaysia

Abstract

Halal industry has became the center of attention worldwide as one of the most important emerging businesses to be researched and developed. Growing demand from approximately 1.8 billion Muslims in the world has became a crucial initiative for Halal industry in many different countries around the world. Although several researches have focused on the purchase of Halal products produced by Non-Muslim food operators, but their findings are still inconclusive. Thus, this study aims to investigate Muslim consumers’ attitude toward Non-Muslim’s Halal food operators. Following Functional Theory of Attitudes, this study hypothesizes that consumers’ utilitarian, value-expressive, knowledge and ego-defensive functions would influence their attitude toward non-Muslim’s halal food operators (like feelings of attachment and dis/liking). Result from a survey of 124 Muslim con-sumers’ confirmed utilitarian and knowledge functions directly influenced their attitude toward Halal food operators which are operated by non-Muslim. We expect the main results of current study to help the non-Muslim’s Halal food operators to develop their best possible strategy in winning the heart of Muslim consumers and therefore experience a jump in their business too.