Journal of Islamic Marketing

Religion, peculiar beliefs and luxury cars’ consumer behavior in Iran

Mohammad Hossein Forghani, Ali Kazemi, Bahram Ranjbarian,
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Mohammad Hossein Forghani, Ali Kazemi, Bahram Ranjbarian, (2019) "Religion, peculiar beliefs
and luxury cars’ consumer behavior in Iran", Journal of Islamic Marketing, https://doi.org/10.1108/
JIMA-06-2018-0101
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Consumer
Religion, peculiar beliefs and behavior in
luxury cars’ consumer Iran

behavior in Iran
Mohammad Hossein Forghani, Ali Kazemi and Bahram Ranjbarian
Department of Management, Faculty of Administrative Sciences and Economics,
University of Isfahan, Isfahan, Islamic Republic of Iran Received 7 June 2018
Revised 28 October 2018
19 November 2018
Accepted 6 January 2019
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Abstract
Purpose – Religious and peculiar beliefs are two of the factors affecting consumer behavior and may
differentially affect individuals and societies. Therefore, this study aims to investigate them from the study of
Iranian customers’ behavior.
Design/methodology/approach – These beliefs are sensitive issues, hence, to investigate them, the
grounded theory method through 15 in-depth interviews was applied.
Findings – The results indicated that evil-eye effect, as a peculiar belief, affected the behavior of luxury
cars’ consumers in the Iranian society while religion had no such effect on the consumers’ behavior, in spite of
religious notions about luxury. Furthermore, the findings revealed that consumers may legitimize their
inconsistent behaviors through a variety of tactics such as different interpretations of religious notions or
dissembling their superstitious beliefs.
Originality/value – The present study will contribute to the literature on religion and customer behavior
through taking advantage of the application of a qualitative research design. Besides, the originality of the study
might be in the application of various tactics by the customers to legitimize their behaviors inconsistent with religion.
Keywords Consumer behaviour, Religion, Grounded theory
Paper type Research paper

Introduction
For many centuries, people were dealing with religion and peculiar beliefs that influenced
their behavior during acquisition, consumption and disposition of goods and services.
Beliefs about jinn, black magic and the evil-eye among Muslims or not conducting weddings
during Easter week in Western societies are instances of these illogical beliefs (Breschi and
Ruiu, 2016; Khalifa et al., 2011). In the related literature, some of these beliefs and the like are
categorized as magical thinking, superstitious beliefs, peculiar beliefs and half-beliefs
(Kramer and Block, 2011). However, an important issue worth mentioning is that the
boundary of these categories may vary between the followers of a certain religion and
others. For example, beliefs in the existence of angels (Heralds of God) is a basic religious
belief in the Arab world, where most of them are Muslims (Mullick et al., 2013), but there is
no such belief in many other societies.
Apart from the vagueness of the boundaries among various peculiar and religious beliefs
across different societies, researchers and fields, the influence of these factors on consumer
behavior should be acknowledged to help marketers to be more effective in local
marketplaces; nevertheless, studies on the effect of peculiar and religious beliefs on
consumers’ decision-making are not numerous (Ang et al., 2014). Journal of Islamic Marketing
Some studies have recently investigated the effect of religion as a cultural parameter that affects © Emerald Publishing Limited
1759-0833
consumers’ perceived value in luxury goods (Teimourpour and Heidarzadeh Hanzaee, 2011), the DOI 10.1108/JIMA-06-2018-0101
 JIMA impact of religious beliefs on consumer behavior in boycotting some specific products (Al-Hyari
et al., 2012), the effect of the presence of religious symbols on customer purchase intentions (Bakar
et al., 2013) and the relationship between religion tourism performances (Terzidou et al., 2017).
Although religion is an important component in consumer behavior (Delener, 1990), it
does not necessarily affect the behavior of its followers as expected. For instance, according
to Martin and Bateman (2014), highly religious consumers are less likely to engage in
environmentally friendly activities, which are commonly emphasized by religion
recommendations.
Some of the studies about peculiar beliefs and especially superstitions, as a kind of
peculiar belief (Kramer and Block, 2011), deal with evaluating and analyzing the strength of
these beliefs in the individuals (Khalifa et al., 2011) and the effect of demographic factors
such as age and gender on these beliefs (Mullick et al., 2013). More recent works have
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inspected the effects of tendency to superstition on behaviors such as participating in a

lottery (Jiang et al., 2009), improving performance in motor agility, golfing, anagram games
and memory (Damisch et al., 2010), facilitating choosing the favorable goods (Ang et al.,
2014) and irrational earnings in the stock market (Weng, 2018). However, to the best
knowledge of the researchers, no study has considered the influence of peculiar beliefs
during the consumption process while most studies have focused on the acquisition aspect
of the consumer behavior.
In addition, there is no consensus over the definition of peculiar beliefs and their
boundaries with religious beliefs (Kramer and Block, 2011). Another issue that makes
studying the effects of these beliefs on consumers’ behavior harder is their unconscious
aspect, which is greater than the conscious one in some situations (Kramer and Block, 2011).
In other words, some people are hardly aware of the effectiveness of their religious and
peculiar beliefs on their decision processes because these beliefs, as a set of cultural factors,
are learned over the socialization process and activated automatically, though they can be
intentionally controlled (Devine, 1989). Hence, their expression of their true views on these
issues might be misleading and doubtful.
All in all, the present study seeks to investigate the effect of peculiar and religious beliefs,
according to a specific faith (Islam) notions, on the behavior of consumers using luxury cars
in Iran, as a Muslim country. Luxury cars are the focus of the present study because lots of
Islamic notions and some superstitions exist about luxury one of whose cases manifests in
luxury cars.

Literature review
Superstition is a widespread, illogical and irrational belief that originates from anxiety or
ignoring a phenomena, whose cause is not known (Ang et al., 2014; Kramer and Block, 2011;
Carlson et al., 2009). According to Kramer and Block (2011), superstitious belief is a kind of
peculiar belief and may exist either as a belief or half-belief. The latter states that many
individuals apparently reject a superstitious belief, but they consider it in some important
events in their life (Campbell, 1996). Some of the most familiar superstitious beliefs include
beliefs in black magic (beliefs that some individuals can change some things with the
purpose of destructing and damaging them using a paranormal ability), the bad luck of
Number 13 and the Friday 13th (Carlson et al., 2009; Campbell, 1996; Mullick et al., 2013).
Despite the diversity of superstitious beliefs, evil-eye has been regarded as a universal
belief, which consistently influences the consumer behavior; furthermore, as this belief is
considered as both religious and superstitious, it has raised a considerable controversy
among its critics (Kotze, 2017). For the purpose of the present study, the evil-eye effect is
investigated from the Islamic perspective.
 Evil-eye is a widespread ancient belief denoting that some individuals can bewitch or Consumer
inflict on others either physically or mentally with a glance. This evil-eye harm is not only behavior in
restricted to people but also harms gardens, houses, harvests, etc. For example, to call a
building beautiful can destroy it if it is mentioned by a person with ominous eyes (Ang et al.,
Iran
2014; Woodburne, 1945).

Islam, evil-eye and consumer behavior

One of the differences between Islam, as an Abrahamic religion and some other faiths is the
detailed commands in all parts of its followers’ behavior (Bakar et al., 2013; Khalifa et al.,
2011). However, the degree of the effectiveness of religious ideas on the followers in general
and consumer behavior in special depends on the degree of its followers’ religiosity, which is
not equal for all (Yousaf and Malik, 2013).
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The evil-eye effect has also been considered in the Islamic literature. To understand the
state of the evil-eye belief in Islam, we should know the two main sources of the Islamic
literature, i.e. Qur’an (holy book) and hadith (saying of Prophet Mohammed). According to
Muslims’ beliefs, the Qur’an is timeless and universal (Bazna and Hatab, 2005; Khalifa et al.,
2011); hence, its notions are always and elsewhere true. In Qur’an (68:51), God tells “When
the unbelievers hear this exhortation, they look at you as though they would knock you off
your feet with their (hostile) glances”.
According to this verse, some of the Prophet Mohammad sayings and some of their
interpretations, evil-eye is really true and is confirmed by the life facts (Abdul-Rahman,
2003) in the Islamic perspective. Therefore, according to the Islamic notions, evil-eye is not
solely a superstitious belief, rather it is a religious belief. However, it is worth mentioning
that evil-eye is not only a religious or superstitious belief as the evidence of this belief can
also be found in the ancient Iranian Zoroastrian history (Cuest and Yousefian, 2015)but also
it might be considered as a cultural belief.
Considering the nature of evil-eye, some people use some formulas and actions
(sometimes superstitious actions) against it. For example, they use the Arabic formula
Mašaallah “Will/May God keep you” (Cuest and Yousefian, 2015) or sometimes they keep a
pocket-size Qur’an in their cars to protect them from evil-eye and other disasters.

Luxury cars market and the related Islamic commands

The concept of luxury is very much complex and vague as the perception of luxury depends
on many geographical, monetary, cultural and individual factors. Therefore, luxury is
sometimes described using ambiguous phrases such as “dream value” (Gardetti and
Rahman, 2016) or using a sentence (e.g. “luxury is about pleasure,” Srun, 2017, p. 43) that
further increases the obscurity of the luxury definition. To come to an appropriate definition
for this study, we should know that luxuries are not used for their inherent value; yet, they
are consumed for impressing others and affluence gesturing (Brun, 2017). In line with
Mootee (2013) and for the purpose of the present study, we define a luxury product as a
product that is significantly higher in price, in comparison with similar products.
Moreover, to have an appropriate definition of luxury cars in Iran, we should take a brief
look at Iran’s luxury car market in 2018. The automotive industry in Iran is of crucial
importance today because it currently enjoys 17 per cent of productions in the industry and
3.5 per cent of the gross domestic product, which is in line with the government support of
the promotion of non-oil industries aims at preventing the unemployment of nearly 3.3
million individuals both directly and indirectly.
During international sanctions, the government imposed high tariffs for automobile
importing (Fathi and Ahmadian, 2016). Along the same lines, tariffs were introduced for
 JIMA gasoline-fueled vehicles according to their engine capacity including capacities under
1,500cc, 1,501 to 2,000cc and 2,000cc to 2,500cc. The tariffs set were 55, 75 and 95 per cent,
respectively and the import of vehicles above 3,000cc is forbidden (Financial Tribune, 2018).
In addition to high tariffs on cars’ imports, the downfall of national currency caused the
price of some regular cars brands such as Kia, Hyundai, Peugeot, etc., to boost exorbitantly
for an Iranian customer.
To return back to the definition of luxury cars, considering the lack of consensus on the
definition of luxury cars, the one that is the focus of the present study is the definition
proposed by trade development organization of the Islamic Republic of Iran in 2018, in
which luxury cars are defined not only as the cars above 2,500cc, but the cars whose price is
above $40,000 (Alef, 2018). Following the selection of the definition of luxury and luxury
cars, some of Islamic notions about it are explained below.
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A brief review of Islamic literature indicates that indulgence through luxury using and
tendency to show off is blamed in Islam (Rice, 1999) and its followers should refrain from
materialistic goals, as one of the factors in luxury consumption (Jung Choo et al., 2012;
Chapra, 1992). As stated in Qur’an (17:16), an increase in the number of luxury consumers in
a society leads to its destruction. In spite of the negative look at luxury, it is essential,
however, to bear in mind that Islam is not an ascetic faith (Chapra, 1992) rather Qur’an (7:96;
5:66; 18:84) appreciates social and individual welfare. The concept of Zakat, as a central
pillar in Islam, which concerns the fair distribution of wealth in the Muslim community,
refers to the social dimension of welfare. Furthermore, the individual dimension of welfare
that refers to personal wealth is not blamed in Islam; however, Islam is against the wealth
accumulation at others’ expense (Dean and Khan, 1998). This issue is so important that
Qur’an argues that there is a right for the community in the individual wealth (51:19).

Methodology
Grounded theory
Although the influence of religion and peculiar beliefs on the consumer behavior in not a
new concept, studies of the consumers’ behavior during consumption process are less
common than studies during acquisition process. Previous works that used qualitative
approaches from the consumers’ perspective indicate the inadequacy of research on the
unconscious aspect of religious and superstitious beliefs in the consumption process. Even
when theories about such an issue do exist, they may be too insufficient to get an in-depth
cognition from consumers’ perception and action (Xie and Jia, 2016). In this paper, grounded
theory is used to investigate the real sophisticated impact of religion and superstition on the
consumer behavior of luxury cars.
Grounded theory was developed by Glaser and Strauss (1967). As a qualitative inquiry
approach, it shares commonalities with other qualitative approaches such as narrative
inquiry, autoethnography and naturalistic inquiry and uses various data collection
instruments such as interviews, participant observation and document analysis (Tracy,
2013). The term “grounded theory” arises from an analysis of data that is “made from the
ground up” (Tracy, 2013, p. 30). In fact, the theory obtained from grounded theory is the
result of data rather than prior studies (Gupta and Awasthy, 2015) and those data might be
collected from various sources, in comparison with other qualitative methods (Bryant, 2017).
In grounded theory, like other qualitative inquiry approaches, validity is considered as
one of the “strength of qualitative research” (Creswell, 2014, p. 251) and reliability is also
taken into account. Validity in qualitative studies denotes the credibility and
trustworthiness of the research process, which is the result of correct implementation of the
research steps and the appropriacy of the findings. Besides, qualitative reliability implies
 that the research approach is consistent across different researchers and different projects Consumer
(Creswell, 2014; Leavy, 2017). behavior in
To ensure the validity and reliability of the present study, different features including
constant comparison, theoretical sampling, memoing, theoretical sensitivity, saturation and
Iran
coding (Amsteus, 2014) were meticulously considered. Constant comparison would be
ensured by the collection of initial data and then a step-by-step analysis of them to obtain
data categories and to compare the category properties to formulate the theory (Bryant,
2017), as reported in Table II.
Theoretical sampling, though not a distinct and clear process, would be obtained from
constant comparison. In theoretical sampling, the researcher attempts to find theoretical
ideas from the best places and at the best time (Bryant, 2017). To ensure this step, snowball
sampling was used as the sampling technique in the present study.
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Quality memoing would be the result of writing the ideas obtained from the data, with
the focus on relationships between codes and their properties (Amsteus, 2014). In the present
study, memoing was continuously done all through the research process to promote coding,
theory integration and theory generation. Theoretical sensitivity, as the other feature of
grounded theory, deals with the capability to think about the interview data in theoretical
terms, which would be obtained from researchers’ in-depth engagement with the process of
working with the data. However, the researcher should unbiasedly look at the data while
simultaneously developing considerable sensitivity to and understanding about the process
and his engagement with it (Amsteus, 2014; Seale et al., 2004).
Saturation is a point at which the categories are fully explained and their relationships
are assessed (Amsteus, 2014) and theoretical saturation is achieved when the data become
repetitive, i.e. increasing the number of participants would no longer offer additional
insights into the study (Taylor et al., 2016). The coding process, as another feature of
grounded theory, forms the grounded theorizing and through this process, the conceptual
abstraction of data and theory emergence will occur (Holton, 2007). Open coding is the initial
step in the coding process to analyze and configure the primary data gathered. The purpose
of the open coding step is to expand categories, concepts and properties based on an open
approach to data (Bryant, 2017; Xie and Jia, 2016). For example, the statement “C7: The evil-
eye exist and I can narrate some stories about that.” can be coded as “the existence of evil-
eye belief in the person” and “C5: I don’t change my car due to the evil-eye,” can be
summarized as “the influence of evil-eye”.
The second step is axial coding. In this step, categories are encoded according to the
phenomena and then the relations within categories and subcategories will be established
(Andronikidis and Lambrianidou, 2010).
The final step is selective coding in which a core concept will be selected and other
related categories will be unified around it. Following the finding of the core concept that
explains most variations in a behavioral pattern, the theory will emerge through the
integrating and refining process (Bryant, 2017). After this step and obtaining the core
concept, the researchers examined the influence of religion and superstition on the
consumers of luxury cars.
It is worth mentioning that no coding software such as ATLAS/ti and NVIVO was used
for data analysis and the entire coding process was conducted by the researchers. As stated
by Bassett (2004), despite the high speed of such software in the systematic analysis of large
volumes of the recorded data and the sifting and sorting potential of the coding software, the
computerized qualitative data analysis impedes the close involvement with the data, which
might decrease the quality of qualitative analysis. Furthermore, as the interviews were
 JIMA conducted in Persian and such coding software is not optimized for Persian language, the
possibility of errors in analyses and finding the latent concepts might increase.

Sample and data

This paper specifically focuses on the effects of religious and peculiar beliefs on the luxury
cars’ consumer behavior. The researchers selected the participants on the basis of owning
luxury cars. Hence, according to the definition of luxury cars and referring to luxury car
owners, the participants were selected using the snowball sampling technique and the first
phase of data collection began with semi-structured interviews. Four initial interviews were
carried out to increase the theoretical sensitivity of the researchers because it is “the heart of
grounded theory method” (Bryant, 2017, p. 332). After the initial interviews, the interview
questions were refined and finalized. It should be mentioned that the questions of semi-
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structured interviews are not commonly fixed and can be further adjusted and clarified (Al-
Mutawa, 2013; Lune and Berg, 2017).
Considering the validity of the intial semi-structured interview, the interview questions
were developed based on the relevant research literature and the suggestions proposed by
some experts in consumer behavior. The interview included questions such as “Would you
please narrate your car purchase story?”, “How do you feel about buying your car right
now?”, “What are your criteria and priorities for choosing luxury cars?”, “What do you think
of evil-eye?” and “What do you think about religious teachings regarding the use of
expensive goods?”.
Subsequently, 15 formal in-depth interviews were conducted with luxury cars’
consumers. Participants were mostly men, who ranged between 25 and 60 years of age. It
needs to be mentioned that the outnumbering of male participants might be due to the
economic gender gap in Iran (Chamlou, 2016; World Economic Forum, 2018). This gap
reveals a huge difference (approximately five times) in the estimated gross national income
per capita between men and women in Iran (Human Development Indices and Indicators,
2018), which might justify the gender difference in the consumers of luxury cars in Iran. Of
course, this issue might not be limited to an economic gender gap, but it might be due to a
kind of traditional gender inequality between men and women in different societies,
especially the Middle East because of which women face barriers in conducting some
economic activities (Markle, 2013).
For the convenience of the participants, regardless of their gender, the interviews were
conducted at their workplace, lobby or the meeting room of their houses. The interviews
lasted approximately around 30 min and were simultaneously transcribed by one of the
researchers. The transcriptions mounted to 75 pages of text in Persian (brief profiles of the
participants along with their confidential labels are presented in Table I). Despite the audio
recording advantages, compared with paper and pencil interviewing (e.g. shorter time and
ease of entering and evaluating data) (Berazneva, 2014), we did not use audio recording tools
to avoid possible conscious and unconscious bias during data collection because religion
and peculiar beliefs are sensitive issues in Iran, as an Islamic country, and participants
might think of the disclosure of their voices, despite our observance of the data safety and
confidentiality and research ethics.
Participants shared their personal or familial experiences about evil-eye and the religious
notions about it through stories and ideas. Besides collecting data, the researchers analyzed
the experiential significance of these themes according to the literature related to religion,
superstition, consumer behavior, psychology and sociology. This reviewing of the literature,
during data collection, helped us execute the grounded theory method more accurately and
keep its immersion process as a feature (Wolf et al., 2015).
 Participants’ Car Price in Iran Marital status Education
Consumer
confidential code Age Car brand and model (US$) S/M level Sex behavior in
*
Iran
C1 37 Kia optima 2014 43,000 M MD M
C2 27 Porsche Panamera 181,000 S Diploma M
2015
C3 25 Renault Talisman 56,000 M MS F
2017
C4 35 Toyota Prado 2012 72,000 S Diploma M
C5 43 Hyundai Sonata 47,000 M BS M
2017
C6 36 Kia Sportage 2016 45,500 M BS M
C7 44 Hyundai Tucson 47,000 M Diploma M
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2015
C8 40 Hyundai Tucson 47,000 M MS M
2016
C9 30 Mercedes Benz E250 96,000 S BS M
2014
C10 43 BMW 528i 2015 99,000 M BS M
C11 40 Kia optima 2014 43,000 M Diploma M
C12 38 Kia Sportage 2016 47,000 M MS M
C13 34 Kia Sportage 2015 45,500 M BS M
C14 33 Hyundai Azera 2016 56,000 M BS M
C15 28 Nissan Murano 2012 60,000 S BS M
Table I.
Note: *C = consumer Participant profiles

Findings
The primary focus of data exploration was to gain intuitions into consumers’ behavior and
the way they justify their religious manner. At first, the researcher asked the participants to
explain the Islamic notions about luxury. Then, considering the comprehensiveness of their
answer, the next questions were asked (e.g. “would you please narrate your car purchase
story?”). According to these questions, the broad insight of each participant was obtained
and the next questions were posed to get more details about their insights and actions.
Following the interviews, the coding process was conducted whose results are presented in
Table II.
The process of obtaining the core concepts from the interview data is an iterative process
of moving back and forth between data and emerging concepts and it continues until all the
core concepts are found (Bryant, 2017). As it can be seen in Table II, the core concept was
obtained from two subcategories.
The level one subcategories (Subcategory 1) related to religion were “no conflict between
religious teachings and purchasing luxury cars,” “not including religious issues in
purchasing luxury cars” and “religion recommendation on having a good car,” which
generated the level two subcategory (Subcategory 2) of “no discrepancy between religion
and purchasing luxury cars”.
Moreover, the level one subcategories (Subcategory 1) related to the evil-eye were “belief
in evil-eye by family and to some extent by the individual,” “belief in evil-eye and trying to
protect against it with almsgiving and reading certain verses of the Qur’an,” which
generated the level two subcategory (Subcategory 2) of “evil-eye effect”.
The two second level subcategories (Subcategory 2), i.e. religion and evil-eye effect;
finally, formed the core concept of “individual factors,” which is the final outcome of the
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JIMA

Table II.
Summary of coding
process of the study
Data Subcategory 1 Subcategory 2 Core concept

C3: Religion commands and luxury cars buying are not No conflict between religious No discrepancy between Individual
related. Some might believe that it is not appropriate to spend teachings and purchasing luxury religion and purchasing factors
a lot of money for a commodity when one can buy it by less cars luxury cars
money, but there is no contradiction between religion and this
issue from my perspective
C4: I do not believe in the conflict between buying luxury cars
and religion
C5: Religious teachings are not in conflict with the
consumption of luxury cars
C6: Religion is not in conflict with using luxury cars
C7: Luxury cars do not conflict with religious issues
C9: I do not think religious teachings have any problem or
conflict with luxury cars
C11: Islam advise us to choose the best of three things: good
vehicle, good wife and big house. So whoever can afford a car
but does not purchase it, he has definitely committed a sin
C10: For me, maintaining my own safety is important, and I Not including religious issues in
do not have any religious concern for it. The money would be the purchasing luxury cars
paid for my safety, to avoid life- threatening complications
C12: I believe that humans deserve the bests, and so they
should, if they can, get the best
C13: I never think of religious issues while using luxury cars
C14: Religion notions are not important. Man should enjoy his
money and his family should be comfortable
C15: I know nothing of religious notions about luxuries. If I
have a lot of money, I allocate it to my family
C8: God has given me the ability to enjoy my life. Human Religion recommendation on
should look for betterment. Islamic notions do not limit having a good car
richness but oppose poverty. For example, in a hadith from
the Prophet Muhammad, the attempt to have a good wife, a
good home and a good vehicle is emphasized
(continued)
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Data Subcategory 1 Subcategory 2 Core concept

C6: my family believe in evil-eye and I fairly believe in it Belief in evil-eye by family and to Evil-eye effect
C3: I do not strongly believe in evil-eye but for the sake of some extent by the individual
others, I try not to be in the spotlight because if anything bad
happens, my family attribute it to this issue; therefore, I try to
exercise caution
C15: I do not strongly believe in evil-eye, but my family Belief in evil-eye and trying to
strongly believe in it. I believe that if a person annoys others protect against it with almsgiving
with his/her luxury car, he will encounter a trouble. I give a and reading certain verses of the
chicken to charity to keep away the evil-eye, but some people Qur’an
do not buy any luxury to avoid evil-eye and this is not
acceptable
C14: I believe in evil-eye and protect myself from it by
almsgiving, reading certain verses of the Qur’an or burning
aspand, but it is not influential on my choice
C13: Isfahani people believe in evil-eye. I commonly pay some
money to the charity to protect against it but this belief does
not affect my choice of luxury car
C12: I believe in evil-eye but it does not affect my choice of
luxury car. I commonly give alms to ward off evil-eyes
C11: I strongly believe in evil-eye but I think that I can ward
off it through almsgiving
C7: The evil-eye exist and I can narrate some stories about
that; however, it does not influence my choice of luxury car. I
do animal sacrifices to protect against evil-eye
C8: I strongly believe in evil-eye but I think that I can ward off
it through almsgiving. This is not a superstitious belief and it
is mentioned in Qur’an but it does not influence my choice of
luxury car
C5: because of evil-eye, I do not buy a new car
C1: I think that considering the car accidents my wife and I
had, evil-eye really exists
behavior in
Consumer

Table II.
Iran
 JIMA open, axial and selective coding process of the present study. The core concept is a more
complex and abstract level of “conceptual density,” i.e. it forms the basis for clear
demonstration of the relationships between categories and the generation of novel
theoretical insights (Bryant, 2017). However, it needs to be mentioned that the two
subcategories of evil-eye and religion are not only individual factors that influence the
behavior of luxury car consumers but also many other factors such as social, functional and
economic ones might influence the behavior of the luxury goods’ consumers (Jung Choo
et al., 2012).

Religion influence and luxury cars’ owning

The data primarily suggested the incentive or neutral role of religious beliefs on the decision
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to buy a luxury car. Two participants denied any role of religion in their decision making
and the rest stated that religion and luxury cars are not in contradiction or even religion
encourages the purchase of luxury cars. As it was mentioned in Table II, the following quote
by C8, a 40 years old consumer, explicates the latter idea.
God has given me the ability to enjoy my life. Human should look for betterment. Islamic notions
do not limit richness but oppose poverty. For example, in a hadith from the Prophet Muhammad,
the attempt to have a good wife, a good home and a good vehicle is emphasized.
From the viewpoint of some others, like a 25 years old woman consumer, there was no
relationship between religion and luxury car buying.
Religion commands and luxury cars buying are not related. Some might believe that it is not
appropriate to spend a lot of money for a commodity if you can buy it by less money, but there is
no contradiction between religion and this issue from my perspective. (C3)
Some participants had no knowledge of or any belief in religion notions about luxuries and
they considered more important priorities such as family. For example, C14, a 33 year old
man, said:
Religion notions are not important. Man should enjoy his money and his family should be
comfortable.
And C15, a 28 year old man, said:
I know nothing of religious notions about luxuries. If I have a lot of money, I allocate it to my
family.

Evil-eye and luxury cars owners

Some participants expressed their attitudes toward evil-eye through stories and experiences.
The following quote by C1, a 37 year old man, highlights how he believe in the effect of evil-
eye and how he deals with it:
Given the few incidents that happened to me and the crashes that my wife had, the evil-eye is
correct. This issue influences my car choice. Sometimes people ask me, “how much did you pay
for this car?”. This question annoys me. I prefer to go with a regular inexpensive car. I do not like
it when someone looks at me and feels regret why he/she cannot afford such a car.
Some of the participants stated that they do not believe in evil-eye, but their families,
especially parents, believed in it. However, an interesting point was that all of them
performed some acts to prevent the evil-eye outcomes. For example, C15 shared:
 I do not strongly believe in evil-eye, but my family strongly believe in it. I believe that if a person Consumer
annoys others with his/her luxury car, he will get into trouble. I give a chicken to charity to keep
away the evil-eye, but some people do not buy any luxury thing to avoid evil-eye and this is not
behavior in
acceptable. Iran
The quote below by C11, a 40 year old man, illustrates that because of the strong concern for
evil-eye, individuals might even sometimes refrain from showing their luxury car to their
relatives:
There is no reason for my relatives to know that I have bought a luxury car. I strongly believe in
evil-eye. This is by no means a superstition and it is mentioned in the Qur’an, but it does not
influence my choice.
Generally, all the participants stated that either they or their families strongly believe in evil-
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eye and they attempt to protect themselves against evil-eye following some religious (e.g.
charity) or cultural recommendations (e.g. burning a special plant named Esfand).
Sometimes, the individual attempts to protect himself by not buying a new favorite luxury
car.

Discussion
This study is not about Muslims’ beliefs or cultural differences in conventions, customs and
values that differ across Islamic and other societies. Rather, as the Subcategories 1 and 2 and
core concept obtained from the coding process reveal, this study attempts to offer new
insights into religion and superstition, as the influential individual factors on consumer
behavior. Of course, other personal factors, such as self-identity value, hedonic value and
materialistic value, also affect the behavior of luxury goods’ consumers (Wiedmann et al.,
2007); however, the research on the role of religion and superstition in luxury cars is still
scanty.
Furthermore, the emphasis is on the possible ambiguities in the boundary of superstition
and religion instances among societies. Also, this study investigated some contradictory
behaviors of consumers with religion and superstition and conceivable insubordination to
religious commands, according to their interpretations and ideas.
Most of the luxury cars’ consumers, who participated in the present study referred to the
incongruity between the religion notions and their beliefs and desires. In some situations,
they denied any conflict between Islam (as their faith) and luxury and sometimes, they
referred to some sayings of Prophet Mohammad to confirm the presumed appreciation of
welfare and luxury consumption, according to their interpretation. Perhaps, this duality in
consumers’ performance comes from the ignorance of religion commands, the justification of
their beliefs using their preferred interpretations from religion or the resistance of religious
beliefs to falsification (Carroll, 2014).
Lacking awareness of religious teachings might be due to a variety of reasons.
Sometimes this happens deliberately and the individual might evade religious teachings;
however, sometimes this lack of awareness occurs inadvertently, i.e. the individual has no
knowledge about the religious teachings concerning this issue. This lack of awareness
might not be the case in the present study, as none of the participants pled total ignorance of
the religious teachings rather they were either aware of the religious teachings that support
the consumption of luxury cars or disregarded religion when purchasing luxury cars. Not to
feel that the religious teachings might conflict with their behaviors, and as a result, not to
feel badly about themselves, the consumers who practice a religion, either adopt their own
interpretation of religion or totally disregard religion while they decide to purchase a luxury
car. However, it should be mentioned that religious teachings are sometimes immune to
 JIMA falsification, which further facilitates decision-making for the consumers that practice a
religion.
Falsification provides the criteria to distinct science from non-science. This feature of
scientific theories helps us to test a proposed theory. In other words, a falsifiable scientific
theory can be tested either empirically or theoretically, but a religious theory, as a non-
scientific theory, cannot be tested because it is resistant to falsification (Tambolo, 2015).
Hence, it might be due to the fact that some religion followers do not actually find any
conflict between their religious beliefs and behaviors. To put it differently, due to the
unfalsifiability of the religious teachings, the behaviors of the followers, for example, their
tendency to use luxury cars and the fact that showing off is blamed in Islam (Rice, 1999),
would not be interpreted as an instance of violating the religious principles and teachings;
therefore, the individual would not feel guilty.
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With regard to evil-eye, as a superstition in many societies and a religious belief noted in
Qur’an for Muslims, the result of this study revealed two kinds of consumers. First, some
luxury cars consumers avowed to their beliefs about evil-eye and attempted to protect
themselves from the evil-eye’s perceived risk taking some actions such as charity or
restraining from using luxury cars or using a regular car instead. Second, some consumers
did not avow to their belief in evil-eye directly, but they also performed such actions to
prevent themselves from the possible evil-eye effects but these actions are more limited, in
comparison with the first. In fact, they might be half-believers of evil-eye and they might
have held this belief just for special goods such as cars or they might have been involved in
unconscious aspects of superstitions (Kotler and Keller, 2016; Kramer and Block, 2011).
However, the point worth noting is that all the participants, either themselves or through
their families, were somehow involved in the issue of evil-eye in purchasing luxury cars,
which is consistent with the religious teachings regarding the influence of evil-eye (Abdul-
Rahman, 2003).

Implications and limitations

Marketers should be noted that there is no obligation for consumers living in a religious
country with a specific faith to behave exactly according to their religion. Marketers should
not suffice to religion notions or the consumers’ words in judging the consumer behavior,
especially in sensitive issues such as religion and superstition. Rather, they should study
consumers’ behavior using appropriate methods to obtain a deep understanding and then
make appropriate decisions.
This might be especially important for international marketing as marketers from
foreign countries, who study the religious and cultural values of a country might hold
misconceptions and might have no real understanding of the consumer behavior in these
countries; moreover, the results of the present study once again acknowledge the need to
focus on global beliefs (and perhaps superstitions), such as evil-eye, in consumer behavior
analysis. Sometimes such beliefs are so deeply taken root in a country’s culture and belief
system that the majority of people, more or less, believe in them either directly or indirectly,
though they may not acknowledge it.
The ancient and religious roots of the evil-eye issue, which was considered as a universal
peculiar belief in the present study, it might impact the behavior of the consumers of other
conspicuous luxury goods. Such an issue might be of interest to marketers as superstitions
largely influence marketplace, especially in risky decision-making (Kramer and Block, 2007).
Purchasing and using luxury goods because of their commonly high prices, entail a high
financial risk. However, the influence of superstition is not the same for all consumers.
Moreover, if superstition is viewed as a cultural factor, it might pinpoint the fact that
 complex cultural issues are often difficult to change and that any change would take a lot of Consumer
time. Therefore, instead of attempting to change such beliefs, marketers are expected to behavior in
understand the differences; in other words, they should develop their cultural sensitivity
Iran
(Holzmüller and Stöttinger, 2001) to face the cross-cultural marketing challenges. For
example, Islam offers a specific culture and a special way of life for its followers, which is of
utmost importance in marketing in Muslim countries (Zakaria and Abdul-Talib, 2010).
No study is devoid of limitations and the present study is no exception. This study
presented an insight into Muslims’ consumer behavior in luxury cars’ market; however, it
did not consider the differences between age, gender and educational levels. Additionally,
the present study used grounded theory, as a qualitative method, to get a deeper perception
of consumers but mixed method approaches can also be applied to obtain a deeper and
broader understanding of consumer behavior in such sensitive issues. Finally, future studies
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might be conducted on other faiths and other kinds of peculiar beliefs such as magical
thinking while considering demographic factors and other luxury goods.

Conclusion
The results of the present study illustrate the complexity of the impact of peculiar beliefs on
the luxury cars consumer’s behavior. This complexity can be discussed from multiple
aspects. The first aspect is related to the ambiguous boundaries of the definitions of these
beliefs in different societies as such beliefs are considered as religious beliefs by some, while
some others consider them as superstitions. The second aspect is the unconscious dimension
of the influence of these beliefs, which has been addressed in the literature and in this study.
This unconscious influence makes the consumers vaguely aware of how these beliefs
influence their behavior. The third aspect deals with the consumers’ endeavors to justify the
influence of such beliefs or prevent their effects by taking some measures such as
almsgiving, reading verses from the Qur’an or finding evidence from verses of the Qur’an to
confirm luxury car purchase.
Accordingly, in the analysis of the impact of particular beliefs, it should be noted that
first, one cannot solely rely on the explicit religious teachings to predict the behavior of
certain followers of a faith (for instance, Islam as it was the case in the present study) and
disregard the complexities and unpredictability of the consumers’ decision and behavior.
Second, due to the diversity and disparity of the beliefs among consumers, marketers must
strive to use a variety of research methods to gain a deeper understanding of consumer
behavior to be able to find, for instance, the causes of the tendency to buy luxury cars
despite some religious teachings. Considering all of the above-mentioned points might bring
the marketers success in cross-cultural marketing.

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Corresponding author
Ali Kazemi can be contacted at: Alik@ase.ui.ac.ir

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