Spiritual marketing and its influence on consumer purchase intentions of XYZ Company, UAE

Abstract

Purpose - The purpose of this research was to identify and explore the concept of spiritual marketing and its influence on consumer purchase intentions of XYZ Company, UAE. In order to conduct the research a high end retail clothing store in UAE was selected. The clothing store has been experiencing significant losses in sales even though it has increasing investments in traditional brand management strategies. Traditional brand management practices focus on capturing the consumers’ minds and hearts and not their spirits. Therefore, due to limited focus of spiritual marketing at the company, and the emerging importance of this discipline in marketing, this study explored the influence of spiritual marketing on consumer purchase intentions of XYZ Company. Design/methodology/approach – The research was based on the quantitative research technique. The population of the study was customers of the selected retail outlet and the sample size was 266. The sampling method used by the researcher was convenience sampling. Primary data was collected by means of questionnaires and was analysed by the use of SPSS software. Findings - Findings of the study revealed that there is a strong positive relationship between spiritual marketing and consumer purchase intentions. Further findings indicated that trust, creativity, social sustainability practices and environmental sustainability practiceshave a moderate positive relationship with consumer purchase intentions. Research limitations/implications – There are more factors that influence spiritual marketing. These have to be explored. Furthermore, to investigate if national cultures have an influence on how spiritual marketing is perceived. Practical implications – Marketing has evolved into a stage where capturing of the consumer’s mind through brand positioning and capturing of a consumer’s heart by emotional marketing are not sufficient. Marketers have to now capture the spirits of consumers through spiritual marketing. Therefore, organisations have to make changes to their marketing strategies to capture the spirits of consumers. Originality/value Academic community: Less research have being conducted in spiritual marketing. Results of this thesis would help fill-in gaps in literature.