Do different Halal certificates have different impacts on Muslims?

Abstract

The Halal is one of the most essential concepts for Muslims and many associations worldwide issue Halal certificates of their own. We investigated in what ways Muslims treat different Halal certificates using instant coffee as an example. We can regard that if Muslims perceive different values for different Halal certificates, they regard Halal certificate more like a commercial certificate while if they perceive almost the same value, they regard the certificate as the religious certificate. We conducted a choice experiment to gather data in Malaysia and applied a conditional logit model. We supposed that there were packed instant coffees from the same company produced in 6 different countries (with/without Halal certificate logo of the produced country) and we compared their valuation for each Halal certificate. Our results showed that although Malaysian Muslims were not familiar with Halal certification logos other than Malaysia, they perceived almost the same values for Halal certificates from 6 different countries, indicating that they regarded different Halal certificates in the same way. This result implied that Muslims found the Halal concept as a religious concept and not as a commercial one.