Abstract
The advent of internet has enabled the marketers to expand
their reach globally. But at the same time, it opens avenues for manipulative
practices to the unknown customers by the unknown sellers. Companies
not only make false promises and sponsor bloggers and key opinion leaders
to obtain incentivized online reviews, but also involve their employees to
act as pseudo customers to praise the goods and services. These acts of
deception, cheating and manipulative practices are targeted to persuade
innocent and uninformed customers to make a purchase decision. These
acts are condemned by the customers who raise their voice online and
offline in the form of negative WOM resulting in bad reputation and negative perception. Scholars and practitioners alike have been increasingly
concerned about such practices. Islam has clearly set rules of business and
strictly prohibited such acts of deception and manipulation. This paper is an
attempt to review and synthesize literature on the topic and develop a link
between Islamic teachings and issues faced by marketing professionals in
the present era. Three focus group interviews followed the literature review
to get the insights from industry professionals, scholars, academicians and
practitioners. The participants of focus groups unanimously agreed with
the fact that consumers should not be exploited by creating and sharing
fake information and the companies should refrain from exaggeration and
false claims. The findings from focus group interview have been analyzed
in the light of literature and the views are mentioned at the end of the paper.
Aqeel Shahzad, Saima Naseer, Asif Khurshid. (2019) Friend or the Foe: An Islamic Ethical Perspective on the Online Consumers Reviews, Journal of Islamic Business and Management, Vol ume 9, Issue 1.
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