Islamic Consumer Behavior: Easy To Access?

Picture: 'Proper Islamic Consumption' written by Johan Fischer

I still remember during my graduate studies, it was obviously difficult to find books relating to Islamic Consumer Behavior. We can find thousands of books entitled 'Consumer Behavior' (CB), but not 'Islamic Consumer Behavior' (ICB). Why is it so? One might say that the discussion of 'Islam' is already included in the entire discussion of CB. When we refer Solomon's work for instance and other CB scholars, this statement is exactly true. You know why? They treat religion as a sub-culture, considering that culture is very important domain to understand the phenomenon of behavior amongst consumers. One might also say that there's nothing much different between ICB and CB. Anything goes beyond Islamic principles will be replaced by the ideal one according to Islam while other things remain unchanged, such as philosophical underpinning parts. For that reason, it is not so suprise to see many Islamic research heavily rely on the existing conventional model or theory to be used as guidance in order to find the truth. To prove so, there are significant numbers of Islamic research apply Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA) without knowing how inaccurate this theory is according to Islamic principles.

Perhaps these are the reasons why we hardly find books relating to ICB. Even if we have it as what Johan Fischer did (refer picture; to my observation, this is the only ICB textbook exists in the market), his discussion only focusses on the reality happened in the Muslims community, not the philosophical parts.



So what?