The relationship between religiosity and consumer behaviour among Arab, Turkish, and Indonesian students: testing an 8th century A.D. measure of Islamic religiosity

Abstract

This study was motivated by the inability to compare the results of the various measurements of Muslim consumers' religiosity. The measurement scales used therein lacked uniformity and their outcomes could not be compared. An analysis of these scales revealed that they were mostly based on or extracted from the four-component description of religion first introduced by early Muslim scholars (699 to 855 A.D). This study analyses this description to understand its potential in creating more consistent religiosity scales. A sample of 511 Arab, Turkish, and Indonesian students completed a religiosity scale composed of 21 items representing different dimensions of the description. As a result, the 21 items were grouped into four factors roughly fitting the four-component description. It was therefore recommended that a new scale be constructed using this description of Islamic religiosity. It was also recommended that similar Islamic historic knowledge contributions be subjected to modern scientific scrutiny.