Clustering Kuwaiti consumer attitudes towards Sharia-compliant financial products: A self-organizing maps analysis

Abstract

Purpose

This purpose of this paper is to clustering Kuwaiti consumers choice of Sharia-complaint financial products and services based on several factors such as religiosity, financial knowledge, customer value, satisfaction, trust, service quality, relationship with service providers and innovation.

Design/methodology/approach

The study uses self-organizing maps, a neural network technique, in order to cluster and segment consumers of Sharia-compliant financial products and services in Kuwait. From a marketing perspective, SOM can be viewed as a flexible clustering technique in which different clusters are identified without the rigid traditional statistical assumptions of linearity or normality.

Findings

This paper shows that consumers of Sharia-compliant financial products in Kuwait can be clustered into three distinct segments: enthusiasts, laggards and rejectors. The enthusiasts represent the largest cluster with a frequency of around 66 percent, while the Rejectors represent the smallest segment with a frequency of 10 percent.

Originality/value

This paper advances our knowledge about the behavioral aspects of financial consumer choice within a non-traditional Sharia-compliant financial products context.

Citation

Al-Salem, F. and Mostafa, M.M. (2019), "Clustering Kuwaiti consumer attitudes towards Sharia-compliant financial products: A self-organizing maps analysis", International Journal of Bank Marketing, Vol. 37 No. 1, pp. 142-155. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJBM-09-2017-0198