This study explores the issue of individual consumer resistance to the organized retailing system in an emerging country. In-depth interviews were conducted to explore the reasons for consumers’ partial or total defection from mass retailing in Tunisia. Our results identify some unusual motives for rejection of imported hypermarkets due to (i) consumers’ non-adherence to the way these modern food stores put forward consumption as a spectacle resulting in voyeuristic behavior and social marking, and (ii) their religiously inspired culture and education that limits consumption and emphasizes the fairness, human and ethical dimensions of commerce. Our findings extend and enrich knowledge on consumer resistance by pointing out the amazing precocity of the emergence of this consumers’ opposition to the introduction of foreign retail formats, in an immature retail market, Tunisia for instance, that are deemed not to be congruent with local cultural and religious values.