It is one of the universal truths of business that one of the most important keys to success is an accurate understanding of the customer. Whatever you produce, trade or offer, without the customer, there is no business.
Profiling the Muslim Customer
The Muslim customer is the most complex and diverse market. Muslim consumer lives all over the world, straddling all income brackets. The Muslim customer eats the widest range of foods from curries to kebabs, pizza to haute cuisine, dim sum to burgers. They cook at home for huge family gatherings, and eat out in 5-star restaurants, hawker’s stalls, bistro’s and fast food chains. The Muslim customer is one person out of four, and frankly, could be anyone at all, from anywhere in the world.
And yet, this diverse, amorphous and almost indefinable group of people are bound together by the strongest of bonds, by the command of their Creator:
“Oh mankind! Eat from the earth that which is Halal (lawful) and tayyib (wholesome).”
These parameters define the eating habits and purchasing preferences of two billion people. These parameters are non-negotiable; they are unmoved by fad or fashion, they are not subject to age, income or geography, and are all the more powerful by not being enforced. They are the parameters of a people who choose, freely, to eat what is lawful.
A Powerful Market Sector
At around two billion people, the Muslim consumers constitute the core of what is perhaps the largest market sector in the food industry, with impressive growth rates. Europe’s Muslim population of around 25 million increased at a rate of 140 per cent over the last 10 years, America’s by 25 per cent, Australia’s by 250 per cent. Asia’s one billion Muslims increased by 12 per cent over the same period, and a quarter of them are in the high growth-engine areas of India and China. This is not a market to ignore.
However, it is just not the Muslims who purchase and consume Halal foods. Significant, and so far unquantified numbers of non-Muslims eat Halal food, partly by coincidence, but increasingly by choice. Food producers from all parts of the world have made the conscious decision to go ‘Halal’ with their product range. And why not? A huge sector of the market insists on it, and the rest are all happy to eat it as well.
Halal – Wide Market Spectrum
Furthermore, Halal encompasses several market forces and incorporates them within the scope of its immediately approaching growth areas. Leaving aside, for a moment, the matter of religion, the current growth sectors of the food market include the following:
Healthy food Arguable the fastest growing sector of the food market. In the US, for example, Wholefoods, a one store start-up in the 70s is now a 3.7 billion dollar company with 26,000 employees. It recorded an average growth over the last 5 years of 19 per cent, compared with the 2.5 per cent of the general grocery market.
Ethnic Foods According to Algodal, the leading ethnic food consultants in Paris, ethnic food sales in Europe are doubling every 4 years, with Southern Europe about 5 years behind the Northern Europe. This phenomenon cuts across income levels. It was urban, and is now provincial; it was the single portion yuppie market, but now the yuppie has a family; on average 3.4 ethnic meals per person are consumed weekly; 1 out of every 2 new restaurants in Paris offers ethnic food.
Assimilation Foreign foods become assimilated and local tastes change, encouraged by global tourism and reverse colonisation. Couscous is now seen as a French dish; curry is the number one take away meal in the UK; kebabs are a typical German staple.
Ethical and Environmental Supermarkets are increasingly offering organic label foods, environmentally friendly and ‘Fair Trade’ products, reflecting the consumers concerns with these issues. Vegetarian is often as much an animal welfare choice as health issue, and today’s consumer is an increasingly aware consumer.
Safety Issues Mad Cow Disease and Avian Flu have had a greater impact on the meat and poultry markets recently than any other force, fuelling the already hot debates about animal welfare on one hand, and the politics of food on the other. One suspected case, let alone an outbreak, can have a dramatic impact on export earnings.
These issues actually overlap the broader parameters of the Halal. Halal incorporates the healthy, the ethnic, the environmentally friendly, the ethical; Halal has clearly become assimilated into all cultures around the world from Washington to Beijing.
A New Market Identifier
Halal represents a very large and rapidly expanding market segment. More importantly, it is a new force of market organisation and identification. Its core fundamentals are not going to change; they are going to expand and steadily incorporate many of the market trends and indicators that I have previously mentioned. Some form of global Halal standard is inevitable, and we anticipate that it will be driven into existence by the market, not the politicians. Once established, it will be a very powerful market force.
Islam is the fastest growing religion on earth, both by birth and adoption. It is estimated that by 2010, the Muslim population will exceed 3 billion. Current estimates as to the value of the global Halal food market, based on how much the Muslims spend per capita per diem, range from 150 to 500 billion dollars annually. These figures of course do not take into account the growing numbers of non-Muslims who eat Halal food. Our assessment is that the market is actually too large to measure, and it is growing all the time.
In our view, the Halal represents a new market paradigm that goes far beyond food. It incorporates an entire realm of goods and services. Halal ultimately represents an market for Halal goods and services produced in a Halal way, sold in Halal arenas according to Halal transactions, using Halal currencies.
Halal food is the tip of the iceberg of the impact of Islam on commerce, a convergence that will form one of the defining forces of the coming decades.
**This article was first published in The Halal Journal Mar/Apr 2005 edition, and was written by Abdalhamid Evans.