Antecedents of Consumers’ Behavior towards Halal Food among Jordanian Customers: A Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) Approach

The Halal concept has been a major element among consumers living in an Islamic country like Jordan. This study aimed to examine the relationships between the antecedents of consumers’ intention and consumers’ behavior towards Halal Food in Jordan, and the mediating effect of consumers’ intention (INT) in the relationship between perceived behavior control (PBC) and actual consumer behavior (ACT) towards Halal Food. A total of 250 consumers completed a survey that was conducted at middle locations in the capital of Jordan (Amman). The study used the structural equation modeling (SEM) techniques (Amos 20.0) to evaluate the casual model and the confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) to examine the reliability and validity of the measurement. Results of the study demonstrated the strong predictive power and explained the consumers’ behavior in Jordan. These result demonstrated the ability of the original Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) model to explain consumer’s behavior towards Halal Food in Jordan. The findings highlighted that the relationship between consumers’ attitude and subjective norm were significant and positive on consumers’ intention, and consumers’ intention on consumers’ behavior was found to be significant with a positive relationship. And one hypothesis resulted in an insignificant relationship namely; perceived behavior control and consumers’ intention. Moreover, intention was found to have no mediating effect. Keywords: Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) consumers’ attitude, subjective norm, perceived behavior control, intention and consumers’ behavior, Jordan. Field: Marketin

The impact of religious affiliation on trust in the context of electronic commerce

There is currently a growing literature on the role that trust plays in encouraging consumers to engage in e-commerce transactions. Various models have been proposed which aim to identify both the antecedents and outcomes of trust displayed towards e-commerce web sites. Increased trust is generally shown to increase positive user attitude which in turn is linked to increased willingness to buy. Studies have shown the antecedents of trust include variables such as the perceived reputation and size of the vendor organisation. The current paper explores the role of cultural variables as antecedents of trust with the main emphasis being on religious affiliation. Participants recruited from Christian, Muslim and other faiths were asked to interact with online bookstores identified as Christian, Muslim or Neutral. Trust and attitudes towards the web sites were measured and this data was used to test the hypothesis that same-religion sites would be trusted and liked more than other religion or neutral sites. This hypothesis was partially supported, but only for the Muslim participants. It was found that the Muslim group expressed significantly more trust in the Muslim site compared to the Christian site. They also expressed significantly more positive attitudes towards the Muslim online bookstore than the other two sites. The implications of these result for theories of web based trust and attitude are discussed along with the practical implications of the findings

El valor percibido en webs de social commerce: Efectos sobre la lealtad del consumidor.

El estudio del comportamiento del consumidor en webs de social commerce está en auge, debido al gran crecimiento del sector en los últimos años. A pesar de ello, su comprensión se encuentra en su infancia, debido a la multitud de factores influyentes. Esta investigación, a través de la metodología del estímulo-organismo-respuesta, estudia qué papel tiene el valor percibido (O) por el consumidor, mediante el análisis de dos de sus principales antecedentes (calidad del sistema y del servicio) (S), así como de sus efectos sobre la lealtad (R). Los resultados obtenidos a partir de la aplicación de la técnica PLS a una muestra de 272 consumidores habituales de estas webs ponen de manifiesto la gran importancia que la calidad de la web tiene en la generación de valor en el consumidor, así como el rol clave de éste sobre las intenciones del consumidor tanto para volver a comprar como para recomendar.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech