The market for Islam-compliant products is getting more and more important, due to the high impact of religious obligation on Muslim consumer behaviour. According to studies, the market for Muslim-compliant brands has increased dramatically, with a global worth of $1.5 trillion a year. However, the market for Islam-compliant brands seems to be underdeveloped in Europe when compared to the rest of the world. Surprisingly, little research is conducted in this highly attractive segment, although Islam is assumed to be the fastest growing religion, with a total of 1.6 billion followers. Furthermore, especially young Muslim consumers constantly demand brands which enable an Islamic lifestyle.When creating brands, the concept of brand identity is highly important as it provides brand uniqueness and the main idea of what a brand stands for. Furthermore, this concept is a fundament for making target-group-specific decisions in brand management. The central question within this study concerns the fact that within the global environment, Muslims especially in non-Muslim countries do not know whether a brand is compliant with Islamic standards and can thus be consumed.This study contributes to close the gap in this segment by identifying several brand identity factors which can help to create an Islam-compliant brand identity. A model is created which helps to manage brand identity in order to attract Muslim consumers. Furthermore, it allows balancing each brand identity according to the needs of a target group and, consequently, enables Muslim consumers to identify a brand as Islam-compliant.

Vedad Alihodzic, M.Sc. with distinction, was born in 1987 in Bosnia and Herzegovina. In 2010 he passed his studies of business administration (focus on marketing) at the University of Bayreuth with distinction. He then completed his Masters Degree in marketing at the Edinburgh Napier University as best of his year. During his studies, the author acquired much practical knowledge in the field of marketing by working in the industry and for a business consultancy. These experiences inspired him to focus his research on brands and brand development.

Text Sample:Chapte 4.2, Research Philosophy and Design:In order to justify the research design, the epistemological, ontological and meth-odological positions need to be clarified first (Creswell, 2007). This is important as the philosophy will guide the research (Saunders et al., 2009; Guba, 1990).Epistemological considerations refer to the decision as to whether approaches of natural science are used in social science (Bryman, Bell, 2011). Furthermore, Eriksson and Kovalainen (2008) argue that epistemology defines the way of knowledge acquisition. Hatch and Cunliff (2006) add that epistemology is the way of how to describe reality. On one hand, positivism is based on facts which are gathered by valid measures using mainly quantitative methods (Easterby-Smith et al., 2008). On the other hand, interpretivism is an in-depth understanding of the topic which is gained through more qualitative methods (ibid.). Although interpre-tivism is frequently used as an approach for analysing consumer behaviour (Saunders et al., 2009), it seems appropriate to apply a positivist approach too as the aim of the research is to find a set of factors which influence consumers. As Jehle (2011) points out, quantitative methods are most appropriate when finding influencing factors as they allow a scientific justification of a huge variety of re-spondents. Due to the usage of a combination of both qualitative and quantitative methods, a clear epistemological position cannot be taken. Moreover, it is believed that the data gained through quantitative methods can be supported by an in-depth understanding gained through qualitative methods. Thus, it can be said that a realist approach is taken; this approach argues that structures exist without human consciousness but knowledge is gained socially. Saunders et al. (2009) argue that the knowledge of reality is formed by social conditioning.In ontology, objectivism follows the idea that reality is objective and is independent from social factors, whilst subjectivism argues that reality is created by perception and thus is constantly modified by actors (ibid.). Following Einstein (n/a), who said, Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one, a subjectivist approach is taken.4.3, Research Method:Research methods can be extrapolated from the epistemological approach. Ac-cording to Guba (1985) (cf. Bryman, Bell, 2011), positivism and interpretivism are clearly separated and thus a combination of both qualitative and quantitative methods is impossible. To contrast this point, Bryman and Bell (2011) argue that epistemology is just a tendency of a research and thus a combination of research methods seems not to be impossible. This is supported by the research of Bryman (2009), who found that a mixed approach is popular in marketing. Moreover, Denscombe (2007) argues that the accuracy of findings can be improved and a more complete picture can be gained by combining both methods. Furthermore, Denzin (2009) recommends a mixture as this is the only way to avoid the weak-nesses of both methods.In this study a mixed research approach is taken. Firstly, expert interviews are conducted in order to discuss brand identity factors from a professional perspec-tive. Interviews are carried out with two academics who are experts from a theoret-ical point of view, and two practitioners who have much experience in creating and managing Muslim brands in both a non-Muslim and Muslim environment. Semi-structured interviews are conducted via email and telephone and are chosen in order to achieve comparability, but new ideas and aspects can still be gained (Denscombe, 2007). Qualitative interviewing aims to explore the interviewees subjective point of view (Bryman, Bell, 2011). Therefore, experts were chosen as they have a huge expertise and thus privileged information which can be examined via a qualitative method such as interviewing (Denscombe, 2007).Secondly, a questionnaire is launched online and sent out to both Muslim and non-Muslim consumers. Questionnaires are used when a huge range of factual information or opinions, attitudes and beliefs need to be collected (ibid.). Although no in-depth questions can be asked and there is in general no possibility for the respondent to explain how something is meant (Bryman, Bell, 2011), it can be argued that it is about how consumers perceive several factors: it is not primarily the aim to understand why they perceive something, but to find out firstly which factors influence their perception at all. Due to the standardised character of a questionnaire, collected data can be compared easily (ibid.). As the aim of the research is to find factors which help in identifying a brand as Islamic, a questionnaire is appropriate as factors can be verified by a huge range of respondents. Furthermore, through questionnaires objectivity can be increased (Adams et al., 2007) so no subjective bias can occur. Lastly, research on influencing factors of attitude and perception has shown the efficiency of questionnaires (Jamal, 2003; Fam et al., 2004; Banyt et al., 2007; Omar et al., 2008).