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Indonesian Millennials’ Halal food Millennials’

Halal
purchasing: merely a habit? purchasing
behavior
Fatya Alty Amalia, Adila Sosianika and Dwi Suhartanto
Department of Business Administration, Politeknik Negeri Bandung, Bandung,
Indonesia
Received 1 October 2019
Abstract Revised 22 December 2019
Purpose – To investigate the determinants of Muslim Millennials’ purchasing behavior of Halal food in a Accepted 8 January 2020
Muslim-majority country under the reflective and reflexive systems.
Design/methodology/approach – Through 339 responds collected from the survey, this study uses 319
responds from Muslim Millennial consumers in Indonesia for further analysis. Data analysis is conducted
using a partial least square (PLS) to verify the relationships between the variables herein.
Findings – Though purchasing Halal food is familiar to Muslim Millennial consumers in a religious society,
this study demonstrated that purchase intention and habit can independently affect their purchasing behavior.
In forming the purchase intention, attitude, subjective norms, perceived behavioral control, and religiosity are
all necessary determinants on this phenomenon.
Practical implications – This study enlightens the food providers to continuously intervene in the purchase
intention of Muslim Millennials as a consumer group as purchasing of Halal food is also a matter of habit for
such consumers in the religious community. To strengthen Muslim Millennials’ purchase intention of Halal
food, governments should harmonize their actions with the various stakeholders involved in this purchase
intention.
Originality/value – This study focuses on the Muslim Millennial consumer group regarding their Halal food
purchasing behavior by integrating two behavioral theories (theory of planned behavior and theory of
interpersonal behavior) to obtain a more comprehensive explanation of their purchasing behavior.
Keywords Halal food, Muslim, Millennials, Habit, Intention, Purchasing, TPB, TIB, Religiosity
Paper type Research paper

Introduction
It is generally accepted that Muslims are an influential consumer group as its population
increases along with the prediction that Muslims will form the largest population by religion
by 2050 (Lipka and Hackett, 2017). This will no doubt affect and impact the global economy.
To answer the Muslims’ needs for Halal products, the Halal market appears as a promising
global market. It is a US$ 2,107 billion market and is expected to increase to US$ 3,007 billion in
2023 (Reuters and Standard, 2018). Many Muslims see Halal as part of a wider lifestyle with
the Halal business sectors currently developing to other sectors beyond the traditional F&B
sector (US$ 1,303 billion) including fashion (US$ 270 billion), pharmaceuticals (US$ 87 billion),
cosmetics (US$ 61 billion), finance (US$ 2,438 billion), and tourism (US$ 209 billion) (Reuters
and Standard, 2018). The Muslim population itself is dominated by a young generation with a
median age of this population being only 24 in 2015 (Reuters and Standard, 2018), This
research refers to this group as the Millennial generation. Past research studies show no
unanimity in classifying the Millennials in terms of year of birth although in general it is
generally accepted to be between 1980s and 1990s (Jang et al., 2011). Millennials are growing to
be the profitable consumer group as they have reached their economic productive age
(Pomarici and Vecchio, 2014; Suhartanto et al., 2019a) and their size is three times greater than
generation X (Bucic et al., 2012; Reuters and Standard, 2017). It becomes necessary to grasp the
Millennials’ behavior as consumers since generations differ from one another in value system,
perception, and attitude (Marmaya et al., 2019). In addition, Millennials are known for their British Food Journal
trendsetter orientation, high levels of consumption, and their most salient character being © Emerald Publishing Limited
0007-070X
tech-savvy (Marmaya et al., 2019). Living in a technologically rich environment, they depend DOI 10.1108/BFJ-10-2019-0748
BFJ heavily on technology and tend to obtain information instantly due to swift and rapid
information exchanges (Bucic et al., 2012; Solka et al., 2011; Valentine and Powers, 2013) This
then unwittingly affects their decision-making process (Ishak et al., 2019). Due to this, a
prominent consequence is that Millennials are known as being fickle customers and disloyal to
brands compared to previous generation (Lissitsa and Kol, 2016; Valentine and Powers, 2013).
Business conduct today is greatly supported by technology and enables all consumers,
especially Millennials, more alternatives, for example, to both local and foreign brands (Saeed
and Azmi, 2019). A past study by Saeed and Azmi (2019) examined the switching barriers of
Muslim Millennials in Muslim-majority countries (i.e. Pakistan and Malaysia) on local and
American brands, which are commonly associated with an anti-Muslim country. The
findings showed that Malaysians showed weaker switching barrier than Pakistanis due to a
distinct sociocultural milieu occurring between them (Saeed and Azmi, 2019).
Having greater choices and because they tend to be fickle, Muslim Millennials are
consumers who easily switch in purchasing Halal foods as well. A study by Abdul Kadir
(2011) in Malaysia demonstrated that the Millennials did not display a sense of guilt while
eating in a non-Halal cafe. Realizing this, only few researches have examined Millennial
consumer group in the context of Halal business (e.g. Ishak et al., 2019; Marmaya et al., 2019;
Osman and Aziz, 2018; Yusof et al., 2019; Zainudin et al., 2019), even though insightful
knowledge could be generated for Halal business development. In light of this research gap,
this study aims to examine Halal food purchasing behavior of Muslim Millennials in a
Muslim-majority country by considering habit and intention as the primary determinants. To
serve the aims, this study integrates two theories of behavior, that is, theory of planned
behavior (TPB) (Ajzen, 1985) and theory of interpersonal behavior (Triandis, 1977), to offer a
more comprehensive understanding of this area of consumer behavior.
This study is written in several sections. In the second section, this study provides
relevant literature reviews to further develop the research hypotheses. In the third section,
this study discloses the methodology that is appropriate to meet the research objectives
herein. The fourth section focuses on the results of the data analysis. In the fifth section, this
study presents the findings to answer the hypothesis described and further considers its
position and relation to other existing research studies. In the last section, a conclusion is
provided with managerial implications, limitations, and potential topics for future research
studies.

Literature review
Theory of planned behavior
For several years, existing research studies have examined the behavior of purchasing Halal
food as a conscious behavior (Bashir et al., 2019; Iranmanesh et al., 2020; Shah Alam and
Mohamed Sayuti, 2011) and used TPB as their primary model. Ajzen (1985) developed TPB
by extending the previous theory, the theory of reasoned action (TRA) (Ajzen and Fishbein,
1970), with a nonvolitional dimension (i.e. perceived behavioral control). Compared to TRA,
TPB provides a better explanation by considering the confidence level of individuals in
realizing a behavior due to one’s lacking volitional control upon the given situation
(Holdsworth et al., 2019; Shah Alam and Mohamed Sayuti, 2011). In TPB, intention is the
single factor that can influence the behavior, and intention itself is determined by three
constructs, that is, attitude, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control (Bashir et al.,
2019; Holdsworth et al., 2019). To be more precise, attitude portrays a consumer’s favorable
evaluation in carrying out the behavior. Subjective norms consider the perceived expectation
of influencing others when an individual performs a particular behavior. Perceived
behavioral control shows the degree of confidence of someone to carry out the behavior
within the given situation (Bashir et al., 2019; Holdsworth et al., 2019).
 In the context of Halal food purchasing, TPB explains that once the purchasing intention Millennials’
of Halal food increases, the actual purchasing will increase as well. Accordingly, the increase Halal
in purchasing intention will align with the increase of attitude, subjective norm, and
perceived behavioral control. If someone possesses a favorable attitude toward the behavior,
purchasing
and a perception that this behavior will favorably influence others toward the behavior, and behavior
when someone is confident to perform the behavior, this will ultimately lead to stronger
purchasing intention (Bashir et al., 2019; Russell et al., 2017). The implementation of TPB in
the Halal food context has been widely used in extant research studies regardless of whether
in a Muslim-majority or -minority countries, such as in studies by Abu-Hussin et al. (2017), Ali
et al. (2018a), Ali et al. (2018b), Sherwani et al. (2018), and Vanany et al. (2019). These research
results show that each country possessed varied significant constructs of TPB, including
identifying the most influencing construct.
Thus;
H1. Attitude significantly influences Halal food purchasing intention of Muslim
Millennials.
H2. Subjective norm significantly influences Halal food purchasing intention of the
Muslim Millennials.
H3. Perceived behavioral control significantly influences Halal food purchasing
intention of Muslim Millennials.
H4. Halal food purchasing intention significantly influences actual Halal food
purchasing of Muslim Millennials.

Theory of interpersonal behavior

Despite the wide usage of TPB in the Halal food context, yet other authors argue that using
TPB alone in this study may not provide a sufficient and comprehensive explanation.
Consuming Halal food by Muslim consumers in a religious society (i.e. Indonesia) can be
regarded as a common matter of fact as Islamic knowledge and practices are concentrated
and well-flourished in these countries. Ouellette and Wood (1998) also emphasized that the
constructs of TPB are more suitable for new behavior. On the other hand, a past study by
Viswanathan and Jain (2013) conducted a comprehensive exploration on the Millennial
generation and their decision-making process, which was seldom the focus on past research
studies. Based on the theory of dual system, it demonstrated that the Millennials in decision-
making could pass through two types of systems (Viswanathan and Jain, 2013). Although the
first system much involves an automatic, quick, and unconscious system , the second system
associates with the reflective, rule-based, and logical means for taking decision (Viswanathan
and Jain, 2013). In other words, system 1 pertains to a reflexive system, while system 2 is a
reflective system (Soror et al., 2015).
With this framework, the authors also took into consideration a construct representing the
reflexive system (i.e. habit) as explained by Sanlier and Seren Karakus (2010) concerning
habit in food choice. Our consideration to incorporate the habit construct herein is bolstered
by reference to the theory of interpersonal behavior (TIB), developed by Triandis (1977).
Though TPB and TIB are both theories of behavior, a clear distinction still exists between
them. According to Valois et al. (1988), a model of TPB can be rightly used in gauging
the impact of the relevant subject on the studied behavior without considering the
appropriateness on performing that behavior within the role of the subject inside the group or
social structure, as emphasized in TIB. Further, TIB portrays intention, habit, and facilitating
conditions as the determinants of actual behavior. Referring to TPB, TIB possesses some
constructs with similar notions to it, namely intention and facilitating conditions (in TPB
known as perceived behavioral control) (Bamberg and Schmidt, 2003; Kim and Lee, 2012).
BFJ However, in measuring intention in TIB, it requires us to consider affection, social factors, and
perceived consequences to perform particular behavior, which provides different affirmation
to intention in TPB. The habit construct in TIB can present the automatic and unconscious
stimulus to generate an impulse to an action (Gardner, 2015). Such a scheme seems to be a
drawback of TPB as it counts the reflexive system (i.e. habit) within the model (Shah Alam
and Mohamed Sayuti, 2011). A contrary concept can be seen between intention and habit; TIB
additionally depicts that the relation between them works in the opposite way. The intention
that presents the consciousness level in performing a behavior decreases as the habit level
presenting unconsciousness increases (Bamberg and Schmidt, 2003; Gardner, 2015). The
application of TIB, though as not as popular as TPB, can be found in a few research studies
within health, Internet usage, and Islamic mortgage domains, such as: Amin et al. (2016),
Gagnon et al. (2010), and Moody and Siponen (2013).
Thus,
H5. Habit significantly influences actual Halal food purchasing of Muslim Millennials.
H6. Habit negatively moderates the impacts of Halal food purchasing intention on Halal
food actual purchasing.

Religiosity
Living in a Muslim-majority country such as Indonesia must necessarily encourage us not to
overlook the religious factor, which influences consumer behavior, especially in the context of
purchasing Halal food. Religion can provide a necessary impact in establishing the
consumer’s behavior, including the food choices (Ali et al., 2018a; Butt et al., 2017; Ireland and
Abdollah Rajabzadeh, 2011; Sherwani et al., 2018). However, the size of the impact can vary on
the customer’s willingness to comply with his religion (Bonne et al., 2007). In detail, religiosity
is perceived as the degree an individual commits to his religion and to what degree the
religion is displayed in his behavior (Abd Rahman et al., 2015). In other words, religiosity can
tell us someone’s compliance level to religious laws (Iranmanesh et al., 2020). A past study by
Wu et al. (2014) confirmed this notion on young Muslims of the Hui tribe when their dislike
shown to other Muslims consuming non-Halal foods contrasts with their apathy when they
felt undisturbed toward non-Muslims who did not keep these dietary rules. Someone with
strong religiosity in the context of purchasing behavior is likely to consciously ensure that the
decision he made will not break the religious laws (Iranmanesh et al., 2020; Vanany et al.,
2019). Existing research studies have confirmed the influence of religiosity on consumer’s
purchase behavior as well (Butt et al., 2017; Iranmanesh et al., 2020; Nurhayati and Hendar,
2019; Suhartanto et al., 2019b; Vanany et al., 2019) (see Figure 1).
Thus,
H7. Religiosity on Muslim gen Y can influence their attitude on Halal food purchase.
H8. Religiosity on Muslim gen Y can influence their Halal food purchase intention.

Research method
The chosen research method was through a survey and is considered suitable to meet this
research aim. Prior to surveying, a questionnaire set is developed with 25 questions (using
five-point Likert scale) presenting all seven variables as drawn within the model. Since past
research studies have examined these variables, the questions are generated from those with
minor adjustments (Iranmanesh et al., 2020; Miharja, 2017; Vanany et al., 2019) and translated
into Bahasa to avoid any language barriers on the respondents. Before handing out the
questionnaire, a pilot test to 33 respondents was performed to ensure the readability of the
 Millennials’
Religiosity Theory of Halal
Interpersonal
Behavior
purchasing
Habit behavior
H7

H8
Attitude
H5
H1
H6

Subjective Purchase Actual

H2
Norm intention purchase
H4

H3 Figure 1.
Perceived
Behavioral Theory of The conceptual model
control Planned of Halal food actual
Behavior purchase of Muslim
Millennials

survey instrument. For data collection, the questionnaires were online and offline distributed
to Indonesian Muslims who have purchased Halal foods and were born between 1980 and
2000 (Reuters and Standard, 2018). to classify the Millennial generation. The survey was
conducted from July to August 2019 with purposive sampling. This study takes Indonesia for
research setting because of its large Muslim population living here (13 percent of the world’s
Muslim population). There is also an increasing interests of Millennials in Indonesia’s Islamic
economy as reported by Reuters and Standard (2017). This study defines Halal food as the
food with the official Halal logo from the Indonesian Halal certifying body (LPPOM–MUI).
From a total of 339 responds, only 319 responds were qualified for further analysis. This
study employs partial least squares (PLS–SEM) with SmartPLS 3.0 to analyze the collected
data. The reasonable explanation to use PLS–SEM is that it can gauge the latent variables
regardless of the size and normality of the data set (Chin et al., 2008).

Results
From 339 respondents successfully obtained, only 319 responds are at the acceptable level to
be analyzed further as shown in Table I.

Measurement model
Out of 25 questions, there are five questions needed to eliminate as their loadings do not reach
the favorable cutoff (0.7), and they lead to poor reliability and validity (Hair et al., 2017), which
are PBC 4 (0.684), PBC 5 (0.670), PBC 6 (0.468), SN5 (0.607), and SN6 (0.471). After the
elimination, 20 questions are successfully preserved to generate acceptable reliability and
validity, in terms of Cronbach’s α (≥0.7), CR (≥0.7), AVE (≥0.5), and Fornell & Larcker
criterion as shown in Tables II and III.
BFJ Variable Description Frequency %

Gender Female 227 71.16

Male 92 28.84
Age 19–23 113 35.42
24–30 160 50.16
31–39 46 14.42
Occupation Civil servant 55 17.24
Private employee 112 35.11
Student 107 33.54
Entrepreneur 23 7.21
Others 22 6.90
Income/month <Rp 1.5 million 93 29.15
Rp 1.5–2.9 million 72 22.57
Rp 3–5 million 66 20.69
>Rp 5 million 88 27.59
Table I. Domicile Sumatra island and nearby 35 10.97
The demographic Java island 281 88.09
characteristics of Kalimantan island 2 0.63
respondents Bali island 1 0.31

Structural model
After obtaining the measurement model with acceptable level of reliability and validity, this
study proceeds to the next stage of data analysis, that is, structural model for hypothesis
testing. Out of eight hypotheses set up, only H6 is rejected since it presents no moderation
effect of habit in the relationship between purchase intention and actual purchase herein. The
other hypothesis demonstrated that purchase intention (β 5 0.135) and habit (β 5 0.175) both
independently can influence actual purchase of Halal food. Attitude (β 5 0.110), subjective
norm (β 5 0.179), perceived behavioral control (β 5 0.305), and religiosity (β 5 0.358) can
impact purchase intention. In addition, the religiosity (β 5 0.578) can affect attitude and
shows a partial mediating effect on the relationship of attitude–purchase intention (p < 0.05).
To confirm the model robustness, some parameters require to examine, namely R2, f2, and Q2
(Hair et al., 2017) (see Table IV).
In terms of R2, religiosity can explain attitude at the moderate level (0.332); religiosity,
attitude, subjective norm, and perceived behavioral control can illuminate purchase intention
at moderate level as well (0.499); while actual purchase can be explained at weak level (0.090)
by habit and purchase intention (Hair et al., 2017). Additionally, the significance of exogenous
variables on attitude, purchase intention, and actual purchase is strengthened by f2. The
variables possess a small effect (>0.02) toward purchase intention including the subjective
norm (0.061), perceived behavioral control (0.133), religiosity (0.147), except for attitude with a
slightly less than 0.02 (0.016). The small effect is shown as well on habit (0.026) toward actual
purchase, yet purchase intention is slightly under 0.02 (0.015). The variable with moderate
effect (>0.15) on attitude is religiosity (0.501) (Hair et al., 2017). In terms of Q2, all dependent
variables herein have values greater than zero, which means the model has predictive power
(Hair et al., 2017) (see Figure 2).

Discussion
This study attempts to explain Muslim Millennials’ purchasing behavior of Halal food in a
religious society within a Muslim-majority country. Assuming that Islamic principles are
thriving in such a country, this study includes habit as the reflective pathway and not only
depending on intention, which presents the reflective system as in past studies. From H4 and
 Factor Cronbach’s Composite
Millennials’
Variables Indicator loading α reliability AVE Halal
purchasing
Attitude (A) 0.880 0.926 0.806
A1 Consuming Halal-certified food 0.906
behavior
is important for me
A2 Consuming Halal-certified food 0.883
is desirable for me
A3 Consuming Halal-certified food 0.903
is positive for me
Subjective norm 0.899 0.929 0.767
(SN)
SN1 My family influences me to 0.858
consume Halal-certified food
SN2 People I respect influence me to 0.894
consume Halal-certified food
SN3 Mass media influence me to 0.869
consume Halal-certified food
SN4 Governments influence me to 0.880
consumer Halal-certified food
Perceived 0.899 0.937 0.832
behavioral control
(PBC)
PBC1 I have time to consume Halal- 0.910
certified food
PBC2 I have opportunity to consume 0.905
Halal-certified food
PBC3 I have money to consume Halal- 0.921
certified food
Habit (H) 0.719 0.876 0.780
H1 Consuming Halal-certified food 0.862
is something I do reflex
H2 I feel weird if I do not consume 0.903
Halal-certified food
Religiosity (R) 0.859 0.905 0.704
R1 I am a consumer of Halal- 0.871
certified food
R2 Consuming Halal-certified food 0.870
is an important part of my
identity
R3 I would feel at a loss if I could not 0.809
consume Halal-certified food
R4 I follow strict Islamic rules to 0.803
consume Halal-certified food
Purchase intention 0.822 0.894 0.737
(PI)
PI1 I agree to pay more to consume 0.825
Halal-certified foods
PI2 If available, I intend to purchase 0.867
Halal-certified food
PI3 I want to consume Halal-certified 0.882
food for my daily consumption
Actual purchase 1.000 1.000 1.000
(AP) Table II.
AP1 My frequency on purchasing 1.000 Reliability and validity
Halal-certified food of the variables
BFJ H5, both purchase intention and habit can affect Muslim Millennials’ actual purchase of Halal
food. The result of H4 affirms existing studies (Haque et al., 2018; Yadav and Pathak, 2017),
which confirms the determinant role of purchase intention on actual purchase behavior in the

AP A H PBC PI R SN

AP 1.000
A 0.182 0.898
H 0.261 0.300 0.883
Table III. PBC 0.220 0.418 0.392 0.912
Fornell–Larcker PI 0.245 0.476 0.477 0.568 0.858
criteria (discriminant R 0.219 0.578 0.471 0.514 0.617 0.839
validity) SN 0.114 0.180 0.316 0.189 0.334 0.220 0.876

Hypothesis Relationships β t-value Hypothesis

H1 A → PI 0.110 2.438* Accepted

H2 SN → PI 0.179 3.450* Accepted
H3 PBC → PI 0.305 5.743** Accepted
H4 PI → AP 0.135 2.012* Accepted
H5 H → AP 0.175 2.851* Accepted
H6 H*PI → AP 0.108 1.838 Rejected
Table IV. H7 R→A 0.578 11.121** Accepted
Hypothesis testing H8 R → PI 0.358 6.341** Accepted
result Note(s): *p < 0.05; **p < 0.01

Religiosity

Habit
0.578**

0.358 **
Attitude 0.175*

0.110* -0.108

Subjective Purchase Actual

Norm intention purchase
0.179* 0.135*

0.305**
Perceived
Figure 2. Behavioral
The summary of model control
Halal cosmetic and green products domains. This significant relationship implies that Millennials’
Muslim Millennials still make prudent considerations prior to actual purchase of Halal Halal
products. Meanwhile, the result of H5 herein also corroborates the past studies in the domains
of food waste and Internet usage behavior (Moody and Siponen, 2013; Russell et al., 2017). It
purchasing
means Muslim Millennials do purchase Halal foods due to habit where the automaticity behavior
occurs. However, this study cannot prove the expectation of a moderating effect of habit on
the relationship of purchase intention–actual purchase as drawn in H6. This finding
demonstrates an opposite result with past research studies (Gardner et al., 2011; Kothe et al.,
2015; Moody and Siponen, 2013; Mullan et al., 2016), which confirms the moderation effect of
habit upon the intention–behavior relationship. However, a study of Gardner et al. (2015) can
corroborate the finding of H6. As no moderation effect exists, it means a purchase intention is
a worthwhile determinant factor to actual behavior regardless of any levels of habit. The
reasonable explanation of this is that performing a cognitive evaluation on purchasing
behavior still exists for the Millennial consumers despite there being an automatic way like a
habit. This explanation is built up according to Hall et al. (2004), who found that the younger
consumers put more importance on information seeking to reduce risks prior to making a
purchase decision. Knowing habit and intention both become the possible paths for
Indonesian Millennials to purchase Halal foods; the nonexistence of a Halal label may matter
in varying degrees to some consumers.
With respect to intention, this study points out interesting findings in H1, H2, and H3. The
purchase intention of Halal food in Muslim Millennials can be affected by attitude, subjective
norm, and perceived behavioral control. However, these findings are contrary to Iranmanesh
et al. (2020), which confirmed that only attitude can influence Malaysian Muslim consumers’
willingness to pay for Halal food, while subjective norm and perceived behavioral control
cannot. Regardless of this contrary finding, Muslim Millennials can have a purchase intention
on Halal food once they are encouraged by their favorable evaluation on Halal food (attitude),
the importance on other’s perspective to purchase Halal foods (subjective norm), and their
confidence in being able to realize Halal food purchasing (perceived behavioral control) like
De Bruijn and Rhodes (2011) explained. Specifically with regard to the subjective norm,
Indonesia is a country with strong collectivist culture, and this will encourage Indonesians
who possess great loyalty and coherence toward their circles (De Bruijn and Rhodes, 2011;
Irawanto et al., 2011). A similar result on subjective norm can be seen in Marmaya et al. (2019)
where Malaysian Muslim Millennials are quite attached to their groups’ recommendations as
well. A study of Viswanathan and Jain (2013) clearly demonstrated that Millennials would put
a large amount of their consideration on friends, family, and digital media before making
either short- or long-term decisions. With regard to perceived behavioral control, our finding
is contrary to Iranmanesh et al. (2020), which saw great volitional control of Halal food
purchasing on Malaysian consumers so that a perceived behavioral control becomes an
insignificant determinant to Halal purchase intention. Yet, our finding supports the past
research (Marmaya et al., 2019). Purchasing Halal-certified foods in Indonesia is relatively
perceived as difficult, despite the large Muslim population. The reasonable explanation
regarding this is that many food SMEs in Indonesia still have not attached nor applied for the
Halal logo for their Halal-claimed food products. According to the chief of Indonesian F&B
enterprise, only 10 percentages of a total of 1.6 million micro and SMEs have attached the
Halal logo onto their products. Low willingness from enterprises to apply for Halal
certification is due to the perceived high cost for certification and shall implicate to increased
price of their products. Hence, even a Muslim-majority country such as Indonesia presents
difficulty in Halal certification, and it does not automatically follow that certification is
widespread.
From H7 and H8, the authors learned that religiosity can affect Muslim Millennials’
attitude and purchase intention on Halal foods. These findings corroborate with
BFJ Mukhtar and Mohsin Butt (2012) and Vanany et al. (2019). Religiosity offers a strong
encouragement for Muslims to always act harmoniously with Islamic values and norms
(Muhamad et al., 2016; Nurhayati and Hendar, 2019). As H7 elucidates that religiosity can
affect attitude, this reinforces a study of El-Bassiouny (2014) since religious values will be
incorporated into the belief system of daily consumption. While religiosity can determine
purchase intention as H8 draws, this reinforced with past research (Bonne and Verbeke, 2006;
Hollenbeck and Kaikati, 2012; Mukhtar and Mohsin Butt, 2012) where purchasing Halal foods
is a mean to express and uphold their religious senses.

Conclusion
This study proposes that Muslim Millennials’ purchasing of Halal food in a religious society
can be comprehended as the impacts of habit and purchase intention dimensions although
they may both be working in an independent way. A viewpoint that tends to see purchasing
Halal food as a habitual behavior for such consumers may put the food providers overlooking
the motivational dimension, namely purchase intention. Based on this study, Muslim
Millennials still engage in sufficient reflection, which later generates Halal food purchase
intention prior to the actual purchase. Regarding the reflection, Muslim Millennials will
establish their favorable evaluations, considering important people’s perception, and
measure their confidence level in realizing Halal food purchase. Additionally, their level of
religiosity is worth taking into account as it can influence their purchase intention as well.

Managerial implications
Though Indonesian Muslim Millennial consumers purchase Halal foods as a habitual
behavior, it does not weaken their deliberatively objective evaluation on purchasing Halal
food. It is of a prevalence in Indonesia where Halal-claimed foods without Halal logo as the
confirmation of claim much can be found in SMEs everywhere. This may occur since
Indonesia is a Muslim-majority country in which the citizens find Halal-claimed food without
Halal logo as inconsequential as the assumption is that most, if not all, food is Halal unless it
contains pork and alcohol. However, this may not always be the case for Indonesian
Millennials who carry out a set of proper evaluation prior to buying Halal-claimed food. Thus,
purchasing Halal food without a Halal logo is not a frivolous thing for them. Halal logo should
be a practical way for Halal food enterprises to distinguish themselves from the purveyors of
counterfeit Halal food. These findings should serve as a prominent basis to encourage the
Indonesian government’s regulation on the urgency of Halal logo attachment in every single
Halal food sold in the Indonesian markets. For the food providers, they should strengthen
their endeavors to always preserve the Halal status of their Halal-claimed foods from farm to
fork. In addition, the governments should involve the surroundings of Millennials (e.g. family,
neighborhood, social media) in educating them about purchasing Halal foods. In terms of
religiosity, it is worth to involve Islamic teaching communities in strengthening the
Millennials’ purchase intention and attitude on purchasing Halal foods.

Limitations and options for future research

Some limitations that exist in this study need to be recognized. First, the sample distribution
largely originated from Java island and can confine the generalization of these findings.
Equipped with a larger variety of respondents in terms of domiciles, it is worth to pursue
future research to get a better generalization of the findings. Second, due to R2 of actual
purchase still yielding a low value, it indicates that there exists other potential constructs that
need to be investigated and should be incorporated in future research.
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Abd Rahman, A., Asrarhaghighi, E. and Ab Rahman, S. (2015), “Consumers and Halal cosmetic Halal
products: knowledge, religiosity, attitude and intention”, Journal of Islamic Marketing, Vol. 6
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Corresponding author
Fatya Alty Amalia can be contacted at: fatya.alty@polban.ac.id

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