Apart from the survey, qualitative research was undertaken to obtain more information from the restaurant managers and to better contextualize the survey results. Semi structured interviews that involved fixed but open-ended questionnaire framework were conducted in the main urban centers of Malaysia. Initially, a systematic random sampling approach was used selecting every tenth restaurant from the list of companies provided by the Companies Commission of Malaysia. However, due to a range of limitations which include selected restaurants did not operate during normal working hours, would resume business operations late evening, eating premises have stopped operations or moved. Considering the overall time and cost, the author had adopted a convenience sampling approach. The author entered the eating premises and met personally with the restaurant managers and asked their permission as to whether they were willing to participate or not. These experiences will be further discussed later in this chapter. As a result, data was drawn from a series of interviews with 33 restaurant managers (Table 5.4). Due to better accessibility, there were more participants in Kuala Lumpur and Selangor. Restaurant managers from halal certified, halal claimant and non-halal restaurants were selected from the five areas.
Table 5.4: The Selection of Restaurant Managers for Semi-structured Interview
Area/Restaurants Halal certified Halal claimant non-Halal
Kuala Lumpur 5 6 5 Selangor 2 3 2 Perak 1 1 1 Pulau Pinang 1 2 1 Johor 1 1 1 TOTAL 10 13 10
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A semi-structured questionnaire framework was used which allowed the managers to respond freely. The interviews took between thirty minutes to one hour per session and were conducted over a span of three months. The main focus of the interviews was to get the respondents to reflect, comment and describe their understanding and expectation of halal certification and experiences operating an eating premise in a multicultural country like Malaysia. Seven topics served as the primary focus of discussions with restaurant managers:
1) Impression on halal certification 2) The importance of halal certification 3) The reliability of halal certification
4) The connection of halal certification on customers 5) The reliability of the food supply chain
6) The problems of halal certification
7) The restaurant managers’ views and experiences of operating an eating premise in relation to halal certification in a plural society like Malaysia
A copy of the interview questions is contained in Appendix 2.
5.5 Expression of Experiences: Conducting Interviews in Malaysia
There is a significant issue in undertaking a more open form of interviews in the field in the position of the researcher and the nature of the relationship between researcher and respondents (Hall, 2010). Given that the only other doctoral thesis on halal restaurant certification was undertaken in New Zealand (Wan Hassan, 2008), it should be noted that there were issues associated with field interviews conducted by a female Muslim and this researcher felt that it was appropriate to include her own insights as a source of comparison as well as providing readers with an all-round account of her own positionality in the qualitative research component of the thesis.
Having a local topic and expecting to meet familiar faces was something that she was looking forward to before she conducted this research. This natural overwhelming feeling developed as she always said to herself that, ‘I know my own country and the style of its people’. However, when the author read an article by Abd Razak (2005, p. 85), “having shared the values, beliefs, customs, etc sometimes does not give anyone exclusive rights to claim to know it all”, she realized that it was absolutely true during her fieldwork when she met and interviewed participants from different ethnicities and religions. As the title on her study focused on halal certification at
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restaurants, she often thought that the non-Muslims in Malaysia would have little knowledge on halal concept and the Islamic dietary laws.
To her surprise, several of the Chinese and Indian restaurant managers who participated during the interview session could explain Muslim religious food far better than the Muslim participants (as discussed in Chapter Seven). An Indian participant who managed a halal certified restaurant deliberately talked about the halal supply chain and its connection to halal attributes that covered trust and confidence. The Indian Restaurant Manager also made marked comparisons on the operations and criticized some halal claimant restaurants that were operated particularly by non-Muslims especially on matters pertaining to halal compliance. In addition, the author also found out that the non-Muslim participants were also aware of the punishments during the afterlife like their Muslim counterparts.
Again, being complacent with the people and environment made the author neglect the respondents’ immediate responses. It was disappointing when calls made to invite selected restaurant managers were turned down. The initial stage of having to conduct the interviews according to every tenth of the list given by Companies Commission of Malaysia was changed to convenience sampling as selected restaurant managers gave multiple reasons of not wanting to participate. They would give excuses such as that their restaurants did not operate during normal hours, that it was time consuming because they were too occupied with their busy schedule, that the topic was very sensitive for them to discuss, and that there was a language barrier where some participants from non-halal restaurants who were mostly Chinese could not converse fluently either in Bahasa Melayu or in English. This was confirmed with a participant who was Siamese- Malay who could hardly communicate in Bahasa.
One of the main reasons that participants did not show interest and were afraid to become the subject during the interview was because of the topic of the survey. To them, discussing a religious issue pertaining to food was inappropriate in this plural society, as it would lead to racial tension. In order to maintain the brotherhood and harmony of the country, one should just keep quiet and refuse to participate. This fear of taking the risk has a connection with the racial riot in Kuala Lumpur on May 13, 1969 that had killed many people (Ong, 1990).
Here, mixed emotions took place as the author was coping with time and the number of participants who have agreed to become the subject. Hall (2010, p. 317) highlighted that fieldwork is as much about emotion and the author agreed on that as in 12 days, she only managed to get
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only 2 participants. Walford (2001) believed that researchers need to excel in the art of selling themselves and their research through more effective micro-level interactions during the access negotiations process. In order to persuade more restaurant managers to become the subject, she presented her name card and introduced herself as a postgraduate student and a researcher. With that, she managed to get quite a number of restaurant managers who were interested to be interviewed.
In such a situation, she felt that she needed a strategy to gain their interest to participate in her research, as the public appears quite pessimistic about academic surveys and interviews. Through her experience, Malaysians will respect someone who studied or graduated from overseas particularly from English speaking countries, as the chance of studying abroad is not easy to obtain. For them, those people are the chosen ones and possess power. This has been well presented by Abd Razak (2005, p. 85) with regards to power and people.
Malaysia is a hierarchical society, for having power is an exclusive right: thus one has to respect those who possess power. The person with power is seen as a significant and important person, since it is important to present what and who you are in the eyes of others, for it is important to be ‘what others see and think of them’. The notion of ‘looking up to’ was taken literally.
During the interviews, some questions were asked indirectly or open for further discussion, as the author was fully aware of the sensitivity of the title. The majority of the participants gave inspiring comments and suggestions on her research since halal certification was highly demanded by the customers (see Chapter Seven). The participants were interested in making a significant contribution to this study given that Malaysian government is set to become a global halal hub. Within this context, there are similar findings with the academic study performed by Wan Hassan and Hall (2003, p. 99) in their research at halal restaurants in New Zealand where they found that Muslim consumers in New Zealand urgently need statutory or legislative regulations and stronger guidelines pertaining to the issue of halal food.
The experiences faced as a Muslim female researcher while conducting research in her home country has contributed many advantages including good cooperation among respondents, pleasant discussions and positive feedbacks. The author did not encounter any problems with the way she dress although Abd Razak (2005) emphasized special attention must be given in presenting one selves specifically with respect to dress and fashion. However, the nature of the
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author’s fieldwork has led her to meet the restaurant managers directly without having to get any approval from ‘gatekeepers’ as found in Abd Razak (2005) and Lahmar (2009).
Furthermore, understanding religious and social rules of what was expected from her as a Muslim and female researcher in Malaysia was important to avoid fuelling any kind of suspicious or feeling of disrespect, which might cause some potential problems with individual respondent. Wan Hassan (2010, p. 120) discussed in detail the importance of having a mahram when some Muslim men were uncomfortable being interviewed by a woman in New Zealand. A mahram is any man with whom a woman has a relationship (of blood or fosterage) that precludes marriage. Mahram men include a father, grandfather, son, grandson, brother, uncle, granduncle, nephew, grandnephew, a mother’s husband, a husband’s son and a father in law to name a few. This situation was rather different if compared to the author’s experience in Malaysia, as the Muslim men were quite liberal and open to discussion although there was a distance while interacting during the interview session.
5.6 Chapter Summary
In this chapter, the methods used to conduct this research were discussed. Given the research that covered the whole country, a nationwide mail survey was conducted to administer the questionnaires. Interview sessions were also performed to better contextualize the results of the mail survey. The response rate for the mail survey was reasonable, that accumulated to almost 31 percent considering the nature of the study and the limitations. The research design, sampling technique, data collection and data analysis chosen were the most appropriate methods to undertake this survey in a multicultural country such as Malaysia. Although the methods used have several advantages like it gathered more findings and could support the previous research, at the same time, limitations did occur. For example, due to some religious and nature of the topic, some of the questions were asked indirectly. Another limitation was the response rate resulting from using mail survey and time constraints from the need to traveling from one place to another in conducting interviews. Performing research in Malaysia has given the author a new experience as it opens her to a set of values and behavioral patterns amongst the participants, as halal matter is a sensitive issue to be discussed.
Within this context, the sample was taken from Malaysia only and limited to drawing generalization from the findings to the broader restaurant managers in other multicultural countries. However, it is a totally new finding as there is no study done specifically focusing on halal certification at restaurants with the restaurant managers as the respondents. It is also expected
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that the findings will generate more insights and understandings on halal certification and its attributes and their connections with halal standard and Islamic dietary restriction.
Above all, this study has contributed new findings on restaurant manager expectations toward halal certification particularly in Malaysia, which has never been studied before in this country. The result is significant to individuals and organizations that cover the government, private sectors, food service industry players and the education institutions, as halal food is demanded by the Muslims as well as the non-Muslims. In this study, the halal status is an essential part to inform the Muslim customers that the food offered is fit for consumption. Findings for mail survey will be discussed further in Chapter Six and results generated from the interviews will be explained in Chapter Seven.
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FINDINGS – MAIL SURVEY
6.0 Introduction
This chapter presents the analysis of the data gathered through the mail survey. It starts with the business and personal demographic profile of the participants. A postal survey was chosen to administer the 2080 questionnaires to selected restaurant managers in thirteen states- Perlis, Kedah, Pulau Pinang, Perak, Selangor, Kelantan, Terengganu, Pahang, Negeri Sembilan, Melaka, Johor, Sabah, Sarawak and the capital of Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur. Participants who took part represented the different types of restaurants, namely halal certified, non-certified but claim to serve halal food and non-halal restaurants.
The next section presents the descriptive statistics for each variable. In order to ascertain the distribution of the data, means and standard deviations were calculated. Here, three types of perceptions from different contexts were gathered; perceptions of your own restaurant, perceptions toward halal certification in general and perceptions toward halal certification in Malaysia. This is to broaden our understanding and to provide better insight regarding the expectations of restaurant managers toward halal certification.
The questions that were asked under perceptions of your own restaurant encompassed restaurant characteristics, serving options, related certification standards and the owner’s dietary restrictions. Meanwhile, perceptions toward halal certification in general derived the findings on halal certification attributes, the potential impact of halal certification and any added advantages in terms of marketing. The final section on perceptions toward halal certification in Malaysia was to determine what the participants believed that other restaurant managers thought of halal certification. It started from the importance and acceptance of halal certification to the issues pertaining to application, maintaining and conforming to the halal standard.
Factor analysis is conducted to derive factors related to halal certification. Reliability analysis is then conducted to determine the internal consistency of the resultant factors. Next, cluster analysis is performed to classify cases into categories and identify the actual groups that have similarities or differences toward their expectations of halal certification. This cluster analysis is then tested and analyzed through mean scores and profiled according to the nature of
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the differences between clusters. Cross tabulation is also performed to provide better insights and to facilitate comparisons between variables. Next, independent t-test is measured to inspect on the differences between the Muslim and non Muslim respondents.