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This study aims to examine the factors influencing Qatari youth’s attitude toward luxury brands and intentions to purchase luxury brands. The appetite for luxury spending in the Gulf region and specifically in Qatar is accelerating even with the fall in oil prices and faltering economic growth.

Both qualitative research in the form of in-depth interviews and quantitative research in the form of survey were utilized in this study. Initially, eight in-depth interviews were conducted with luxury store owners and/or salespersons to identify the most important factors influencing attitude toward luxury brands. Furthermore, 330 Qatari respondents between the ages from 16 to 25 years were interviewed via a mall-interception method at two different malls with high-end/ luxury stores in Doha. Structural equation modeling using AMOS was run to analyze the hypothesized relationships between variables and test the model fit.

The findings indicated the overall fitness of the model. More specifically, the results indicated that fashion involvement, brand consciousness, social comparison and experiential needs have a significant impact on attitude toward luxury brands and consequently on their purchasing intentions.

This study has several limitations. A more comprehensive framework can be proposed including more variables that may also influence the attitude of youth toward purchasing luxury, for example, brand prominence, vanity and functional value. Comparative studies across demographics (e.g. male vs female and adult vs young luxury buyers) as well as across different cultures and countries can also provide interesting insights related to luxury purchasing behavior among youth. Developing a typology for Qatari luxury consumers can also be very insightful, specifically for supporting brand owners in fine-tuning their marketing and targeting strategies. Finally, other moderating variables like influence of social media or peer influence can also be considered in future studies.

The study sheds light on a significantly important and emerging phenomenon; the increasing consumption of luxury in the gulf region and specifically in Qatar in an attempt to understand the main drivers to their attitude toward luxury brands in general.

The purpose of this paper is to measure the impact of the different religiosity dimensions on the attitude of Muslim youth towards fashion.

To understand the relationship between religiosity and Muslim youths’ attitude towards fashion, a structured questionnaire was circulated amongst university students in Cairo and Alexandria (Egypt’s two largest cities) using convenience sampling method. Religiosity has been measured using the operationalized definition by Glock (1972), as consisting of five different dimensions: ideological, Intellectual, ritualistic, experimental and consequential. Likert scales were used to measure religiosity dimensions, and semantic differential scale has been used to measure the attitude of Muslim youth towards fashion. An initial sample size of 350 Egyptian Muslim youth was surveyed on-campus using face-to-face method by a group of volunteer trainer students.

Cronbach’s alpha has been measured for all variables to ensure internal consistency. The findings provide evidence that a negative relationship exists with all of the religiosity dimensions under study and attitude of youth towards fashion. More specifically, the intellectual and consequential dimensions had the strongest negative significant relationships with attitude of youth towards fashion.

The results of this study should be considered in light of a number of limitations on which recommendations for future research are based. First, the use of a student sample, even if these consumers are important and justified for this research, may hinder the generalizability of the findings across other segments of consumers who might behave differently. Second, this study relies on the declared attitudes of the respondents, which are likely to be biased because of respondents’ inclination to give socially desirable answers and spiritually peace reactions. Such an evaluation cannot identify unconscious attitudes and behaviours.

The paper’s interesting findings serve to remind entrepreneurs and marketers in general that they cannot neglect the element of religion in their marketing activities, particularly in the fashion industry and the development of apparel targeting Muslim women. Such an understanding will help both marketers in designing their marketing practices according to their Muslim consumers’ convictions, and academicians in their research endeavours.

Investigating and measuring the influence of religion in general and Islam in particular on youth’s attitude towards fashion is considered a very contemporary and raw topic that shall have significant contribution to the existing literature, as well as to fashion designers and marketers.

The paper provides some fundamental observations on leadership from an Islamic perspective and the Islamic revealed knowledge. The purpose of this paper is to measure the association between Islamic leadership and the most common western forms of leadership namely; transactional, transformational, authentic, and ethical leadership styles as well as its relationship on leader’s effectiveness and organizational innovation.

An empirical investigation was conducted using portrait value questionnaire recommended by Schwartz (1994b), confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) followed by structural equation modelling (SEM).

The results indicated that Islamic leadership is positively and significantly associated with perception of leader effectiveness and innovation outcomes. In addition the findings revealed that Islamic leadership is positively correlated with transformational, ethical, and authentic leadership as well and not with the transactional leadership style.

Among the practical implications of this research is that while a large body of leadership research has adopted a variation of leadership theories, our results suggest that we should seize to pay attention to the influential Islamic leadership.

The originality of this paper is that it extends scholarly understanding on Islamic perspectives of management which is a relatively new and growing area of interest for academics and practitioners, in terms of both theory and practice.