Halal food: structured literature review and research agenda

Purpose – This study reviews and critiques the halal food literature, a growing field of research. Additionally, the authors classify the significant themes in this research stream, outline opportunities for future research directions, and offer a future research agenda. Design/methodology/approach – A sample of 221 scholarly articles published from 1997–2020 was investigated using the structured literature review method of Massaro et al. (2016). The authors used the bibliometrix R package and VOSviewer software to mine information about journals, articles, authors, citations, keywords, and countries. Findings – The analysis reveals five research clusters: halal food and the role of certifications, halal food and awareness, halal food production and quality, halal food in tourism management, and halal food and the supply chain. The primary research flow comes from Asia. However, collaborations are also emerging in other continents. Additionally, scholars should consider stressing the links among halal food and sustainability, innovation, and technology. Research limitations/implications – The study analyses this field from a broad perspective, but only considers articles published in the Scopus database. Future research could extend the research methodologies used by, for example, considering mixed method analysis. Originality/value – Despite several studies in the field, no studies have thus far reviewed the literature on halal food to the best of the authors’ knowledge. Hence, the presented analysis using pioneering methods considering sustainability and innovation as priorities provides a starting point for future research.