Abstract:
Business ethics have been a major concern for society for a long time.
However, relatively few studies have tried to examine the ethical issues
of the marketing process from a consumer’s point of view, Moreover,
among the many determinants of consumer ethics, religiosity has been
a little examined facet that, nevertheless, has had a strong influence
on consumer ethical beliefs. Therefore, this paper attempts to examine
the impact of religiosity on consumer ethical beliefs. This paper has
used the “quest” dimension of religiosity, which is outlined in the
extant literature, along with intrinsic and extrinsic dimensions so
that the complete domain of religiosity would be captured. Based on a
rigorous literature review, it was hypothesized that there is an impact
of intrinsic religiosity, extrinsic religiosity and quest religiosity on
consumer ethical beliefs. In addition, an interaction between intrinsic
and extrinsic religiosity was hypothesized, while the final proposition
argued that intrinsic religiosity is a stronger predictor of ethical beliefs
than extrinsic religiosity. The study was quantitative, while the crosssectional
(survey) design was chosen as the overall research design.
Data was analyzed using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) to test
the hypotheses, and data analysis revealed that there is an impact of
intrinsic, extrinsic and quest religiosity on consumer ethical beliefs.
The findings of the study emphasize the role of ethics education, and
consumer socialization in ensuring consumer ethics. Furthermore, this
study urges managers to use ethical appeal in advertising and adopt
relationship marketing strategies instead of using punitive actions to
control the unethical behaviours of consumers.
Keywords: Consumer ethical beliefs, Religiosity, Extrinsic religiosity,
Intrinsic religiosity, Quest religiosity
