Degree of Islamic culture adoption in Malaysian SME hospitality industries

Abstract

This study examined the effect of Islamic culture adoption on consumer behaviour. It examined the relationship between Muslim tourists' commitments to hotel selection behaviour in Malaysian SME hospitality industries and the Islamic cultural moderating effects of participation in their decision-making process. It has two objectives: the first was to determine the relationship between Muslim tourists' commitments to hotel selection behaviour in Malaysia. The second objective was to investigate the moderating effect of Islamic culture in decision-making and participating effort on hotel selections of these same tourists. It was a descriptive study based on 350 surveys conducted among Muslim tourists in Malaysia. A total of 304 responses were received, representing a response rate of 93%. Of this, only 281 case with no missing values for all the variables were used for data analysis as the others were incomplete. The correlation analysis that resulted from this study confirmed previous researchers' observations that higher Muslim customers' commitment was linked with higher adoption in Islamic culture. The results suggested that among the three components of customer behaviour, Islamic culture and hotel attributes were the most important predictors of Muslim tourists in hotel selection behaviour.