The effects of brand equity, brand trust, product involvement, value consciousness, attitude and Shariah compliance on halal purchase intention in Bangladesh: religiosity as a moderator

Purchase intetntion is a very important term in consumer behavior and has positive outcome if nurtured properly. Marketers thus emphasize precisely in this in order to have better business performance. Halal purchase intention is a new term in the realm of Islamic marketing and branding. Halal purchase intention is the intention to choose halal (permissible by Islamic Law) product/service for purchase or use. This study focuses in the intention of the purchase of shariah compliant Islamic Financial products that the Islamic banks are offering. In this regards, customers and prospective customers who bother about consumption of halal products and reside in Bangladesh are selected as the sample of the study. A number of variables have been extracted through extensive literature review to investigate their influence on halal purchase intention of Islamic banking products in the context of Bangladesh. The variables include brand equity, brand trust, product involvement, value consciousness, attitude and shariah compliance while religiosity have been used as the moderators in the relationship between these six IVs and halal purchase intention. The Partial Least Square Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) was used to test the hypotheses of this study. It was found that brand equity, brand trust, product involvement, shariah compliance and attitude were significant factors influencing halal purchase intention of Islamic Banks. Among these five determinants, product involvement was found to be there most significant followed by brand trust, attitude, shariah compliance and brand equity. In the moderating effect test of religiosity, it was found that the relationship between brand equity, product involvement, value consciousness and halal purchase intention was not moderated by religiosity; the relationship between brand trust, shariah compliance, attitude and halal purchase intention was found to be moderated by religiosity. The current study gathers opinions from the diverse group of participants on the factors influencing the halal purchase intention. Thus it supplements empirical evidence to address the research gaps and responds to the calls for examining the halal purchase intention of Islamic banking products. The results derived from this research provide several practical implications for bank managers and policy makers specifically, in terms of how to evaluate, build and improve the purchase intention of customers. Thereby, it will help managers to make marketing decisions related to product demand, market segmentation and promotional strategies.