Aliakbar Jafari

University of Strathclyde · Department of Marketing

In this case study, we examine a UK-based anti-halal consumer activist campaign called the Boycott Halal Campaign (BHC). Using critical discourse analysis applied to online data, we show how, by framing halal-certified products as an existential threat to the UK, BHC drew from and contributed to the institutionalized ideology of Islamophobia. Given...

This commentary section presents a dialogical discussion on Appau's (2021) "Toward a divine economic system", an article in which he explores religious exchanges in the context of a Pentecostal Church in Ghana and proposes "the divine economy" as an alternative economic system to interrogate and extend scholarship on the relationship between the ma...

Critics often associate West-centric knowledge hierarchies in marketing (as well as in business and management studies) with (neo)colonialism, academic journal ranking fetishism, resource scarcity in non-Western societies, and the domination of the English Language in the international scholarly landscape. I advance this debate by examining the rol...

Keywords: market system dynamics, consumer culture theory, field theory, network theory, actor network theory, performativity, institutional theory, political economy, population ecology. Drawing on insights from the sociology of markets, we offer an analytical review of market system dynamics (MSD) in consumer culture theory (CCT) research. We su...

This article suggests that Islamic tourism be theorized not as a type of tourism but as a subject area that conceptualizes tourism as an institutional field in which different actors at micro, meso, and macro levels discursively and performatively co-constitute multiple realities for Muslim populations. This conceptualization can: 1) enable researc...

Research on market dynamics shows that markets (trans)form through the institutional work of a wide range of actors. This literature, however, focuses on resourceful and/or powerful actors who can freely and openly shape the market. Via an inductive analysis of the Iranian female fashion clothing market, we examine the institutional work undertaken...

This study explores how German consumers who have overcome a poverty spell draw on and integrate their past selves in different ways into their altered post-poverty transition identities and lifestyles. The research identifies two post-poverty archetypal narratives: the "redemptive selves" and the "critically reflexive returnees".

This chapter presents an analysis of the prevailing debates on what constitutes ‘Islamicness’ in contemporary spaces of markets. It argues that in order to build and sustain reputation in highly politicised and symbolised global socioeconomic systems, organisations need to avoid transient identity anxieties and adopt a long-term strategic approach.

Understanding the desire for visiting friends and relatives (VFR) has been examined in previous studies. Yet, research on the antecedences and consequences of social interaction between host and guest in VFR tourism has not received enough attention. Addressing this gap, this study introduces ceremonious politeness (CP) by tourists in consuming foo...

This wholly conceptual paper examines the breadth of literature on Market Entry Modes, a fundamentally important and strategic issue for managers in growing organisations of all sizes in all sectors. Key concepts and terms are defined and then a set of key Internationalisation Theories are systematically and critically reviewed, these being: the Tr...

Sustainability research in the macromarketing literature has been largely limited to exploring sociocultural values and norms, business practices, public policies, and economic conditions. Although the concept of ‘values’ constantly recurs in the literature, religious perspectives have received little attention. By presenting an alternative interpr...

Like a Phoenix from the Ashes: Being (sustainably) happy after overcoming a spell of poverty

Book review of '‘Muslim Societies in the Age of Mass Consumption: Politics, Culture and Identity between the Local and the Global’

This is a book review of Mehita Iqani's book entitled "Consumer culture and the media: magazines in the public eye". The review highlights the importance of Iqani's work on an understudied context.

In response to Jafari and Sandıkcı’s (2015a) critique of her 2014 article entitled “The one-billion-plus marginalization”, El-Bassiouny (2015) dismisses the authors’ key ‘ontological’ debate over exceptionalism as a historical and political discourse and diverts attention to new areas of enquiry (e.g., disciplinary legitimacy, Islamic jurisprudence...

In recent years, a critically oriented sub-stream of research on Muslim consumers and businesses has begun to emerge. This scholarship, located both within and outside the marketing field, adopts a socio-culturally situated approach to Islam and investigates the complex and multifaceted intersections between Islam and markets. This book seeks to re...

The chapter offers a critique the extant literature’s lack of attention to poverty and socioeconomic injustice in Muslim geographies and offer a research agenda to critically examine these phenomena in the context of Islamic consumptionscapes. The authors locate the recent interest in understanding the connections between Islam, consumption and mar...

This chapter presents an analysis of the prevailing debates on what constitutes ‘Islamicness’ in contemporary spaces of markets. It argues that in order to build and sustain reputation in highly politicised and symbolised global socioeconomic systems, organisations need to avoid transient identity anxieties and adopt a long-term strategic approach....

This four-volume collection focuses on emerging and cutting-edge work which is shaping the contemporary landscape of consumer research. The volumes bring together key conceptual and research papers related to practices, sharing, politics and spaces. The editors provide a set of comprehensive introductions that scopes out current understanding in th...

This special commentary section proposes new directions in researching the nexus of ethnicity and well-being under three themes of (1) mobility and shifting identities in relation to place, (2) empowerment and identity performance in relation to the virtual space, and (3) religious conflicts in relation to markets and spaces of consumption. The thr...

Identifying the “religion–ethnicity–well-being” nexus as an understudied topic in marketing and consumer behavior research, we propose three main trajectories for future research: Firstly, given the politics of religions, there is a need for studying societies that suffer from and are affected by religioethnic tensions and also different types of r...

In her article entitled “The one-billion-plus marginalization: Toward a scholarly understanding of Islamic consumers”, El-Bassiouny (2014) attempts to provide “a comprehensive conceptualization for Islamic marketing and its foundational principles within the context of the Islamic faith” (p. 48). The present essay critiques some of the key assumpti...

In English: Recently, there has been an upsurge of interest in developing knowledge and new practices in relation to Islamic marketing. The birth of the International Association for Islamic Marketing, Journal of Islamic Marketing, annual conferences of Global Islamic Marketing, and ad-hoc workshops and seminars on various marketing phenomena (e.g....

Within marketing and consumer behaviour research, museums have been generally conceptualised as public consumption spaces where visitors benefit from a variety of affective, recreational, and cognitive experiences. As such, the social context has been largely subordinated to enhancing visitors' cultural consumption experience in the physical enviro...

Research into consumer ethnicity is a vital discipline that has substantially evolved in the past three decades. This conceptual article critically reviews its immense literature and examines the extent to which it has provided extensive contributions not only for the understanding of ethnicity in the marketplace but also for personal/collective we...

This paper highlights the significance of scholarly contributions from non-western contexts to business and management studies in general and marketing in particular. It calls for constructive, ethical, and committed collaborations between authors and reviewers of academic articles in order to collectively enhance knowledge generation in a global e...

Understanding visitors’ level of engagement with tourist attractions is vital for successful heritage management and marketing. This paper develops a scale to measure visitors’ level of engagement in tourist attractions. It also establishes a relationship between the drivers of engagement and level of engagement using Partial Least Square, whereby...

Traditionally, Iranian women's use of dress and make-up has been an arena – sometimes a battleground – for identity negotiation. The present study questions the current over-emphasis on identity and the prevalent tendency to look for identity meanings in the use of hejab (veiling) and cosmetics. The results of fifteen interpretive in-depth intervie...

Jean-Claude Usunier and Jӧrg Stolz’s edited volume Religions as Brands: New Perspectives on the Marketization of Religion and Spirituality builds upon and contributes to the extant literature on the status of religion, religiosity, and religious institutions in contemporary consumer society (see Jafari, 2014 for a concise classification). As a perf...

This paper offers some theoretical insights into Devine's account of the Riverside Museum in Glasgow. It elaborates on three interrelated themes the authors have derived from Devine's report: (1) how historical representations arouse nostalgic sensations and sensibilities in museum visitors (2) the role of narratives in visitors' development of the...

In recent years, Islam has become highly visible in media, politics, and the marketplace. The increasing popular and academic attention to Islam is partly driven by the events of 9/11 and the related imperative to ‘‘better’’ understand Muslims. The interest is also stimulated by broader socioeconomic developments, in particular neoliberal transform...

Within marketing and consumer behaviour research, museums have been generally conceptualised as public consumption spaces where visitors benefit from a variety of affective, recreational, and cognitive experiences. As such, the social context has been largely subordinated to enhancing visitors’ cultural consumption experience in the physical enviro...

Research involving vulnerable consumer populations is on the increase, and understanding the social consequences of consumption within different marketing contexts has become a common theme across Consumer Culture Theory, transformative consumer research, and critical marketing. Yet the diverse difficulties faced by researchers who investigate cons...

In this paper, the authors examine the consumption practices of young adult Iranians in the context of cultural globalization. Based on the analysis of qualitative data collected through participatory observation, in-depth interviews, and focus groups with 28 individuals in Tehran and Karaj, the authors demonstrate how, through its cultural flow (c...

We are all guilty. For unethical business practices, increasing environ. mental crises, overconsumption, market misbehaviours, social injus. tice, falling rate of satisfaction with life, institutionalization of fraud, declining morality in society, and many other imperfections, we are all guilty. We are guilty because we have developed too much hop...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to encourage a critical dialogue within the realm of Journal of Islamic Marketing . It invites marketing scholars and practitioners working on various topics related to Islam and Muslim societies to adopt fresh theoretical and methodological positions that would enhance the understanding of multiple marketing an...

Like many other disciplines within the broad area of social sciences (e.g., anthropology, gender studies, psychology, sociology, etc.), consumer research is also highly navigated by scholars from Western countries. This, however, does not mean, by any means, that consumer research is devoted to studying Western contexts only. As evident from the ev...

In this paper, we examine the notion of material consumption culture in Islamic societies. We differentiate between institutionalized religion and religion as culture. We contest the orientalist portrayal of Islam as a fanatic ideology opposed to western modernity's features of secularism, individualism and pluralism. With reference to the Qur'anic...

In this paper, we examine the notion of material consumption culture in Islamic societies. We differentiate between institutionalized religion and religion as culture. We contest the orientalist portrayal of Islam as a fanatic ideology opposed to western modernity's features of secularism, individualism and pluralism. With reference to the Qur'anic...

In this paper, I critique the cliched representations of culture in the general context of cross-cultural business and management studies. My primary objective is to demonstrate how a lack of conceptualisation of culture has resulted in the proliferation of misconceptions and cultural stereotypes. I identify some possible causes for the creation an...

This paper presents an exploratory study of the consumption practices of UK‐based young Iranians. Based on a series of in‐depth interviews and participatory observation we provide an insight into the identity‐constituting meanings associated with consumption practices. We illustrate how individuals use consumption discourses to tackle a series of i...

The complexity of the issues of youth has made this broad subject a focal theme for a large number of researchers and scholars who have looked at it from different perspectives (e.g., anthropology, sociology, psychology, and politics). Positioned in consumer culture theory, this paper is another attempt to explore a different dimension of the youth...