Exploring consumers' opposition motives to the modern retailing format in the Tunisian market

Purpose – This study seeks to explore the issue of individual opposition to the organized retailing system in an emerging country. It aims to identify the motivations for rejecting such retail outlets as well as how the resistance that is generated expresses itself and to point out the amazing precocity of the emergence of this resistance in these developing countries. Design/methodology/approach – In‐depth interviews using the critical incident technique were conducted to explore the reasons for consumers' partial or total defection from mass retailing. Respondents were selected through snowball sampling to identify information‐rich cases using personal and professional social networks. Findings – The study's results highlight non‐organized individual initiatives of avoidance and defection from hypermarkets in the emerging country under study as opposed to the structured protest movements in developed countries. In addition, the findings show a two‐fold orientation of this resistance: on the one hand towards the hypermarket format as a whole, and on the other towards foreign (as opposed to local) retailers, indicating an incongruency between some Western values associated with the foreign retailers, or even linked to globalization, and the values of the Arab‐Muslim local culture. Research limitations/implications – Only individual resistance motivations were explored, although their interactions with more collective shared motives for resisting would lead to a fuller understanding of the rejection of hypermarkets. The reason for this choice was mainly because organized movements are still embryonic in emerging countries or at best not sufficiently structured. Originality/value – This paper extends and enriches knowledge on consumer resistance by showing that even in an immature retail market, consumers are able to reject and oppose the introduction of retail formats that are deemed not to be congruent with local cultural values. It underlines in particular some unusual motives for rejection of imported hypermarkets due to consumers' dislike of, and non‐adherence to, the way modern food stores put forward consumption as a spectacle resulting in voyeuristic behaviour and social marking, and their religiously inspired culture and education that limits consumption and emphasizes the fairness, human and ethical dimensions of commerce.