Exploring Halal Awareness Within a Heterogeneous Society: The Case of Meat Consumers in Indonesia

Abstract

The Indonesiansss halal market potential is about US$144 billion to 154.9 billion per year, but in the present condition, it is far from the potential that can be achieved. Several researches have proven halal status is not the main consideration in food buying decisions. The research about bread consumers in Banda Aceh should get paid attention to because they prefer product quality and price to halal status. This controversial finding is very surprising because it will negate the halal market potential in Indonesia. Therefore, in the case of meat consumers, this research aims to explore deeply halal awareness within the meat consumers. Halal awareness in this research is the dependent variable, and the independent variables are age, gender, marital status, education level, job, amount of family members, and monthly income. This research hypothesizes that halal awareness is varied due to the heterogeneity of socioeconomic background. However, based on 100 samples determined by the Lemeshow formula, taken by accidental sampling technique due to the absence of a sampling frame, and by performing the chi-square test, this research proves that halal awareness is relatively equal, although they vary in socioeconomic condition. The heterogeneity of social status and socioeconomic conditions does not influence the diversity of halal awareness. Therefore, Indonesia's huge halal market potential is proven, and the halal industry could optimize to penetrate it by maintaining halal status and showing it clearly to halal food consumers.