Christian Consumers Research Articles

Perceptions of Nature in Early Modern Portuguese India

Portuguese perceptions of nature in the new worlds they encountered in Southeast Asia from the turn of the sixteenth century were a complex amalgam of inherited frameworks and the forging of a new gaze or vision. Grand claims that the Portuguese discoveries amount to the “construction of space” and the “invention of humanity” have been trumpeted, but are too overblown. From another perspective, Portuguese scholars have recently engaged in a philosophical debate aroundexperiencialismo—the distinction between “scientific experience” and the supposedly pre- or non-scientific “lived” experience of the senses (experiência vivencial), suggesting that the Portuguese Discoveries fall at a critical juncture between these two hermeneutic paradigms. But what did this amount to in concrete terms?I would prefer to turn to other scholars like the Belgian historian Albert Deman, who has stipulated that the perception of Indian nature in the European imaginary, was locked in three unchanging tropes that even first-hand experience could not easily undo. These tropes were exuberance, superabundance and luxury, and go right back to the first encounters between East and West in antiquity, notably Alexander the Great's adventures of the fourth century B.C., which impressed upon Westerners the East's “superior forms of life” and what Pliny, for example, dutifully acknowledged as “the wonder of the victorious expedition of Alexander the Great, when that part of the world was first revealed.” Why wonder, and what does Deman allude to when he writes of “superior forms of life”? The common impression was that everything grew more forcefully, and in greater profusion in the East. There were, for example, two flowerings a year of some plants; the colours and tastes were stronger; the smells were beguiling. What the Portuguese noted as “thefumos da India” merely drew on biblical reference in the Book of Proverbs to the “spicy breezes of the East”. From these basic conceptions had sprung compilations of all the fabulous stories of the East, texts such as those produced by Ktesias the Knidian and Megasthenes whose ideas were passed down through Pliny into the genre of the marvellous, ormirabilia, fanciful speculations and fables developed along the lines of half-truths reported by returning merchants and travellers, and sometimes fictions spread by Arab middlemen keen to retain their long-standing monopoly of purveyance to Christian consumers.

The effects of micro-cultural differences on consumer behaviour: the case of differences in the buying behaviours of Christian and Muslim consumers

This paper examines the effects of micro-cultural differences on buying behaviour, especially with regard to electrical and home appliances. Sixty-six Christian and Muslim consumers, citizens of a multicultural town, participated in 11 focus groups to allow the authors to examine the differences in the consumers' perceptions, attitudes and purchasing behaviour. The research took place in Komotini, a Greek town where Christian and Muslim consumers, with differences in religion and in other micro-cultural factors, have coexisted for decades. Results reveal that microculture develops different patterns of behaviour for Christian and Muslim consumers, based on their religious preferences and social class. Differences were also found between Christian and Muslim consumers in their perceptions of the ideal store, as well as in their buying selection criteria. The results suggest that micro-cultural differences have to be incorporated in retailers' marketing strategies in multicultural societies.