Conspicuous Consumption in the Name of Allah

*Aila Khan, University of Western Sydney, a.khan@uws.edu.au

Russell Belk, York University, rbelk@schulich.yorku.ca
Louise Young, University of Western Sydney, louise.young@uws.edu.au

ABSTRACT
While there has been considerable study of conspicuous consumption in marketing, no
research has investigated conspicuous consumption of religious products. In this paper, we
argue that consumers may need to demonstrate their association and support for a religion in
part by the purchase, use and display of religious products. We explore consuming of
religious products via observations and in-depth interviews conducted with different
stakeholders involved in the distribution and consumption of religious commodities in
Pakistan. Automated computer analysis of transcripts and field notes highlights the different
concepts that shape the thinking of each group. A large majority of the participants’ accounts
offered justifications and excuses (Corrado, 1991) as possible explanations for consumers’
conspicuous behaviour. Our findings can help better understand these dynamics within a
Muslim society. It is recommended that visual elicitation technique be used in any future data
collection exercise.

Keywords: Conspicuous consumption, religious products, Pakistan, Leximancer

Track: Consumer Culture Theory

BACKGROUND
Conspicuous consumption has been defined as ostentatious display and consumption for the
purpose of acquiring or maintaining status or prestige (Page, 1992). This has been studied
extensively in marketing (see Mason 1984 for a review) as well other contexts including
economics, psychology, archaeology and historical research. Religious consumers have been
described as those “religious adherents…who shop for religious commodities for which they
are ready and willing to bargain and pay a price” (Ukah, 2003). Businesses associated with
the production and marketing of ‘articles of faith’ are growing in importance (Mazumdar &
Mazumdar, 2005). These objects are produced and consumed for devotional and adornment
purposes (Pinto, 2007) and are associated with Islamic, Christian, Judaic, Hindu, Sikh,
Buddhist, and other religious groups. This paper explores the reasons behind the purchase
and consumption of religious products in an Islamic context. Possible reasons include
consumption as the physical expression of people’s beliefs, to impress others, to seek the
blessings of God or gods, or as a result of social pressure.

Individuals affirm and demonstrate their affiliations with a religion by undertaking religious
activities privately and publically. The latter can involve overtly displaying their religious
commitment in group-oriented rituals such as the Hajj, congregational prayers, the meals
before and after the fast, and so forth. These activities can involve the purchase and use of
religious goods and services. The role of religious affiliations in the choice and purchase of
consumer goods has long been recognised (Hirschman, 1983). However, the choice and
public consumption of religious products remains under-researched.

Conspicuousness is the degree of social and public visibility surrounding the consumption of
a product (Piron, 2000). Thus, religious artefacts which are used in public events or are
displayed on a person, vehicle, or home exterior are at least somewhat conspicuously
consumed. Paralleling the theory of conspicuous consumption, proposed by Thorstein Veblen
(1899), we argue that there is a related concept of ‘conspicuous religious consumption’ which
operates with conspicuous consumption of this class of goods and services. While for many
religion is a private matter, we argue that conspicuous and even ostentatious consumption of
religious products is common and is evidenced in many ways such as, carrying beads;
displaying images of religious leaders; building shrines, and visibly displaying a Quran.
Following Grace and Griffin (2006), we define conspicuous religious consumption: an
individual’s show of support to a religion or religious group through the purchase and
display of religious merchandise - on the person (e.g. wearing of charms, amulets, or Allah-
related jewellery) or as part of his/her possessions. This is distinct from non-conspicuous
religious consumption where religious merchandise associated with a specific religion is
purchased, but used privately (e.g. using a prayer mat in privacy).

Explanations for conspicuous religious consumption can be found in social identity theory.
Altemeyer (2003) proposes the concept of religious ethnocentrism - the tendency to make ‘in-
group’ versus ‘out-group’ judgments of others on the basis of their religious identification
and beliefs. Beliefs emerge through ongoing interaction with and instruction by family and
community. Identification emerges from beliefs and may need to be displayed either as part
of a deeply-held set of beliefs and/or to ensure continuing membership in the in-group. The
latter is likely to be culturally determined. For example in some cultures display is prescribed
- by the required wearing of religious garments, grooming styles, and food practices. Even
when it is mandated, conspicuous religious consumption may signal important shared values
among in-group members and the strength, group size, and group’s relationship to out-group
members.
 Figure 1 (Left to Right): Products
on display in shops near a shrine
in Lahore, Pakistan; The Hand of
Fatima (which is worn around the
neck to ward off the evil eye); A
shop-keeper displays a ‘chaadar’
with Holy verses printed on it.
(Used as an ‘offering’ when
visiting the shrine).

The global Muslim population of 1.8 billion people is of interest to marketers as well as
researchers and is viewed as an attractive market worth $2.3 trillion (Janmohamed, 2012).
The consumption of Islamic religious products is not limited to special occasions (e.g.
weddings; the Hajj to Mecca), but is used to seek blessings in daily activities. Pakistan was
chosen as the context for our study because there are high levels of conspicuous consumption
present. The country has been through a formal Islamisation process with the objective of
establishing a ‘true Islamic society’ in the country (Hassan, 1985). This program, which
formally started in 1977, had an impact on all aspects of life for Pakistanis, with social
gatherings, educational institutions, workplaces and media carefully monitored to ensure
strict adherence to the government-prescribed Islamic way of life. In the wake of this
proscription, people gained additional motivations to take up extrinsic forms of religious as
this may provide security for self and family. We argue that the Islamisation campaign
triggered ‘extrinsic religious orientation’ (Allport & Ross, 1967). This can serve as a means
to achieve a self-serving objective – social rewards. It has been proposed that individuals
with an extrinsic religious orientation might want to appear to be more moral or righteous
than what they really are (Rowatt, Ottenbreit, Nesselroade, & Cunningham, 2002). In some
situations, these researchers suggest that people could use religion to appear “generous,
selfless, or humble in the eyes of others” (p. 228). Previous studies have also shown positive
associations between extrinsic religiosity and self-serving attitudes and behaviours. To quote
(Allport & Ross, 1967), the extrinsically motivated person “uses his religion” to serve
additional interests such as providing sociability and distraction, status and self-justification.
The prominent display of various religious artefacts, in what we are calling conspicuous
religiosity, can greatly assist in achieving all of these goals. Examples of the increasing range
of available religious products in the present context are presented in Figure 1.

METHOD AND FINDINGS

This paper focuses on the 20 personal interviews which were conducted by trained
fieldworkers as part of a larger project which included observations, focus groups and
secondary research. Interviews were conducted in Urdu in and near the capital city of
Islamabad. Our informants included seven Islamic scholars, six consumers of religious
commodities, five retailers (of religious products), and two pirs. Pirs are regarded as Sufi
saints who often reside near a holy shrine. Traditionally, pirs have the role of a revered
teacher and are expected to provide guidance to their disciples. While a scholar has attained
formal education in the field, a pir either inherits his position or receives the title in return for
being the custodian of a holy shrine.

The interviews were transcribed in Urdu and later translated into English. A back translation
process involved the English transcripts being extensively compared to the Urdu
transcriptions to ensure that meanings and nuances were not lost. On average, interviews
were just over 33 minutes long. Due to the law and order situation in Pakistan and the threat
of dangerous charges of blasphemy in discussions of religion, a local research agency was
commissioned to collect data. Initially, a pilot interview was conducted and the transcription
along with the translation was sent to the authors. As one of the authors is of Pakistani-origin,
and is fluent in Urdu, feedback was provided to the fieldworkers, which guided the
subsequent interviews. The project was identified as potentially discomforting to the
participants as the research topic could trigger ‘powerful emotions’ (Corbin & Morse, 2003;
p. 337). Because of the social and political undesirability of discussing religious
consumption, we explored the concept by using the indirect questioning technique of third
person scenarios (Punch, 2002) so that participants did not have to talk directly about
themselves.

Leximancer was used to analyse the transcribed interviews. It is an automated text analysis
program that seeks underlying conceptual structures by computing the proximity and
interrelation of key words, amalgamating closely connected words into concepts and mapping
the proximity of those concepts. Leximancer output has been validated (Smith & Humphreys,
2006) and researchers across a range of disciplines (Grech, Horberry, & Smith, 2002) have
found no significant differences in the results of coding undertaken by this computer-based
program versus manual analysis; however automated coding is demonstrably more reliable
(Smith and Humphreys 2006).
Figure 2 displays the edited concepts (terms on the map) clustered into themes (balloons on
the map) and a list of the most frequently occurring concepts. Also shown are tagged folders
that indicate the positions of the interviews for each stakeholder group relative to concepts.
Figure 2 provides the structure of the conceptual content of the interview transcripts. The
Leximancer map shows three main themes (seen as coloured balloons) of approximately
equal size emerging – Things, Prayer, and PBUH (referring to the Prophet – Peace Be Upon
Him) (hereafter shown capitalized and in italics.). The theme Things contains the concepts
people, religious, different and benefits (hereafter shown in italics) and the theme Prayer
contains the concepts prayer, reward and cap. There are fewer concepts in the theme PBUH.
The partial list of the most frequently occurring concepts in the data in Figure 2 shows the
concepts things and people, the focus of this research, as not surprisingly having the highest
counts, i.e. the number of two sentence blocks of text coded as those concepts. They appear
in the centre of the map indicating they are central to discussions and are most connected to
other concepts, indicated by the lines radiating from them which indicate the strongest
concept links. People and things are linked by the concept religion, highlighting the context
of use that links things and the people who use them and are also linked by benefits which are
the specific values that objects bring their owners. Co-occurrence analysis (not shown)
confirmed the strong link between the concepts things and people with 286 two-sentence
blocks of text coded as containing both concepts – the highest co-occurrence for a pair of
concepts.

The position of the folder tags in Figure 2 summarises the content of each group of
informants’ interviews relative to the themes and concepts, and allows comparison. The
folders pirs and retailers are fairly close to one another (top left). This indicates that their
conceptual content is similar. Both folders’ strongest link is to the concept people, indicated
by the lines connecting the folders to this concept, indicating that concept is particularly
prominent in these interviews. The consumer and scholar folders are a considerable distance
from pirs and retailers and distant from one another indicating that the discourse of these
groups is quite different. Consumers’ discourse is most connected to concepts within the
theme prayer. Scholars are most closely linked to the concepts within the theme PBUH. This
highlights the nature of different views each group expressed.

Ranked Concept List

Concept Count Relevance
Name-Like
Allah 439 15%
Quran 387 13%
PBUH 323 11%
Muslim 271 09%
Word-Like
things 1408 48%
people 1113 38%
prayer 614 21%
use 540 18%
religious 413 14%
house 307 11%
reason 275 09%

Figure 2: Leximancer Map of Interview Transcripts and Partial Ranked Concept List

Leximancer is linked to a browser providing access to the text coded as particular concept,
enabling explorations of the deeper meaning of these. Systematic consideration of the text
coded as both people and things showed that stakeholders have differing opinions as to the
image of the people conspicuously using religious commodities. It was mostly retailers who
focused on describing religious commodity-users as being “pious” and “righteous.” These
informants saw the users as those “who offer prayers,” and “become good Muslims” through
the use of the religious items. An explanation of the process of these good Muslims comes
from a retailer who said:
Because when something good is displayed, people do not think of bad things and wrong deeds. When
they look at good things they read and recite it and are prevented from doing wrong (Retailer N)
The alternative and more dominant perception emerged across all groups and focused on
disassociating the usage of these commodities from Islam. Another retailer, F, commented,
“religion has nothing to do with these things….these are just to be laid on the shrine.” When
consumer E was asked what he would think of a Muslim who did not display any religious
products at his house, he responded:
I would not think anything. If that person offers prayers and recite the Holy Quran there, but has
nothing (no religious commodities) and I have, then I must give it to him. Otherwise, there is no
problem. It does not make any difference if he does not have any.
Similarly, most of the religious scholars disagreed with the notion of congruence of or
association between commodity usage and being a good Muslim. A typical statement was:
No, Allah does not consider these things. He basically is [concerned] with the inner thing. Prophet
(peace be upon him) said that piety lies here (points to the heart). If instead of counting beads, you do
it on [your] hands, then you can do it (Scholar A).
Significantly, there was an overwhelming denial amongst consumers that there were
pressures to use these commodities. Consumers’ generally made statements such as “it is
one’s own wish to use these things and to have them at home.” However retailers differed in
their opinions regarding the influence of others. Some retailers had opinions similar to
consumers. For example, one retailer insisted that the buying of religious commodities took
place solely because of people’s “devotion” and “love” for the religion. This retailer, GM,
emphasised the absence of any social pressure.
“Nobody is forced. Neither have we forced them (the people), nor [have] any [one] else…not even the
religious organisations. This is based on your own beliefs. No there is no family pressure, nor is
anyone else forcing it”.
Another scholar agreed arguing that this was because family influence is less than it used
to be. However, a retailer argued that families are likely to influence consumption of
religious commodities because use patterns are established in childhood via family
practices.

While there was virtually no acknowledgement of societal pressure to include religious

artefacts and in fact there was considerable active denial of it, the interviews highlighted
that religiosity was fostered by scholars, i.e. religious leaders, at least indirectly. Often it
was embedded in their teachings. As one scholar said:
Yes, religious leaders also teach people in the light of Quran and Sunnah [way of life prescribed
by Prophet Muhammad] and people are influenced to use these things (Scholar A)
Another scholar, T commented: “Certainly! The things that we consider as good regarding
Islam, we advise their use.” Religious commodities’ use was recommended in order to be a
good person. One scholar claimed ‘the Prophet has suggested its (sic) use’. Another went on
to comment:
When these things like miswaak (traditional toothbrush made from a tree branch), scent and Quran are
available in a house then they will be used (and) read…then he (the person) will certainly become a
good Muslim.
Another scholar (A), similarly indicated that religious objects provided learning reinforcement
and when considering the value of people displaying Quranic calligraphy:
Whichever house I visit, I like the one where such things are displayed. We think that these people are
curious about the religion … that they are searching for religion.
Another functional motive given for the display of religious products was for the direct value
they provide. As scholar AD explained, “Certainly, a house where Quranic verses are
displayed will be protected from the veil of Satan”.

However other scholars while agreeing that the objects have value, indicated that they do not
influence peoples’ decision to purchase these religious commodities. As Scholar AD said:
Religious scholars have nothing to do with it. Whether a scholar says it or not, a follower of the religion
does this (i.e. uses religious commodities) by himself…I use these things because it has been ordered by
Allah. If I offer prayer, I will do it on the prayer mat, if I do recitation, I will do it on the Holy Quran…
This is more in line with the perceptions of consumers who in the main argue that it is a
personal choice that is largely or entirely inner-directed:
(There) are Muslims who sometimes keep these things for blessings, out of love. I keep these things
because I love them. There are [also] people who keep these (things) to show off…10 to 15% keep
them to show off, to be popular (Consumer M)

CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE RESEARCH

Overall, this analysis reveals the emergence of a sociological category of accounts,
particularly from consumers. Such accounts involve ‘statements made to explain untoward
behaviour and bridge the gap between actions and expectations’ (Scott & Lyman, 1968, p.
46). We conclude this because the observation of daily life in Pakistan shows considerable
conspicuous consumption of religious objects and a burgeoning industry of the sale of these
objects. For example we witnessed cars and trucks with painted and flashing messages and
designs signalling Islam. While the protection of travellers is one explanation for this, the
display was very conspicuous. Besides conspicuous display, it appears that some religious
objects are purchased “just in case” they might help, despite a lack of belief in their efficacy.
For example, we saw the hand of Fatima (see Figure 1) on necklaces to be strung around a
child’s neck in order to ward off the evil eye of those who might be envious of such a lovely
child. However, in the main consumers indicate that use of religious objects comes from their
beliefs and identification.

Although conspicuous “holier than thou” shows of material piety were sometimes discussed,
these practices were attributed to religious requirements, protection, or the practice of being a
“good Muslim.” That is, informants were more likely to cite accounts in the form of
justifications for these practices than they were to admit conspicuous display, even when
referring to others. And it is probable that many consumers also use these products for their
functional benefits further enabling negation of conspicuous display.

This sociological category of accounts is confirmed to some degree by scholars and retailers
– many of whom indicate that conspicuous use and display does exist and is encouraged by
them. It is certainly in the merchants’ interest to encourage or at least imply the protective
powers of conspicuous consumption and this appears to be supported by scholars’ accounts.
The findings also emphasise the ecological nature of the research – that is, by exploring the
wider network we are able to combine multiple stakeholders’ views and analyse them in part
according to their differing interpretations of the purchase and use processes. This study
contributes towards a better understanding of the cultural and religious factors impacting
Muslims in Pakistan; however we believe there are wider implications. Understanding the
religiosity and consumption practices of Muslims provides an opportunity to understand
Muslim communities in other parts of the world and perhaps members of other religions as
well.

This study only investigated the use of tangible products, and did not focus on instances of
conspicuous religious consumption which are evident during certain religious activities such
as Hajj (pilgrimage to Makkah). Future research will include further development of our
method in an attempt to elicit insights into the deeper processes at work in consumer
decision-making in the context of religious consumption. We will undertake further
lexicographic analysis that explores stakeholders’ differing interpretations in greater depth
and will augment this with other analytic approaches. In future studies of Pakistani and other
Muslim communities we will experiment with the refinement of photo elicitation, i.e. using
photos of people using and displaying religious objects as well as those who do not. This will
give participants more concrete opportunities to consider the different ways that religious
products can be used. Studies in additional contexts will give greater insights into the cultural
and religious differences in the conspicuous display of religion, and the reasons that underpin
these practices. The work can also be extended to other religions’ practices for additional
comparisons and insights.

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