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How do financial innovations form and evolve in Islamic countries? How do nature and the organisation of innovation interact? Focussing on retail payment services, this paper aims to analyse recent developments and displays an overview of the status of financial innovation in Islamic countries.

This study uses six countries as case studies, namely, Egypt, Indonesia, Morocco, Pakistan, Turkey and the UAE. Comparison within and across those cases helps the author provide explanations of how and why such innovations have worked in particular contexts.

While cash remains dominant, the author found rapid growth in retail payments, but no consensus on standardisation. Several digital innovations have been introduced and begun to converge. Finally, there seems to be a disconnection between innovations and inclusions.

This research paper is, among the few, related to innovation in financial services in Islamic countries, and can be used to develop appropriate marketing strategies for capturing value in the market.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how two Islamic banks have involved employees in developing service product innovations.

The case studies describe the roles of employees during specific stages of development process of service product innovations. The data were collected through face-to-face oral interviews with senior product development managers and marketing managers.

The results suggest that employees' involvement is encouraged in the selected banks through the presence of a product champion, involvement of front-line employees, support from the management, multifunctional team structure and employee external contacts. A Sharia board was at the heart of the development process of service product innovations in Islamic banks. It was also revealed that employees are more involved in developing service product innovation for retail customers in comparison to the corporate customers.

Given the focus of current literature on conventional banks, the present study attempts to widen the service innovation discussion to include Islamic banking services. The two cases have practical implications for managers and add to the academic knowledge via the extension of a concurrent staged model.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the performance of conventional and Islamic paradigms of banking through profitability. Profitability of conventional and Islamic banks is compared through four authentic methods of ratio through reliable statistical data from seven countries. The healthier bank spread in the Islamic way of banking is analyzed and compared with the conventional trend of banking.

Profitability of two‐streams of banking are analyzed through bank spread, bank margin to total assets, non‐interest‐based costs to total assets and relationship of bank‐spread and NPBT&Z of conventional and Islamic banks. Data from 87 banks belonged to seven countries were analyzed to obtain results, of which 35 were following Islamic principles‐based products and services. Countries are selected among those which are following binary‐banking systems simultaneously. Statistical data are gathered from audited‐annual reports of these sample banks.

Islamic banks are found to reflect marginal bank spread but bear higher operational (non‐bank margin) costs.

Statistical data are gathered from audited annual accounts of banking companies. Foreign banks are excluded in this analysis due to non‐availability of published accounts for most of such banks at country level. Further NPLs of sample banks were not available in most of sample banks, which could provide actual statistical figures for earning assets of bank.

The paper will be helpful in analyzing the business approach of the global, growing trend of Islamic banking.

This paper aims at retracing changing attitudes toward Islamic financial products in international markets over the past three decades, thereby providing an account of their “unexpected” expansion outside of the Muslim world.

This conceptual paper builds on an archival research

969 news articles published in the UK from 1985 to 2014. Although emphasis is put on the decade of fast changing attitudes toward Islamic finance (IF) in global markets (2001-2011), the years prior to (1985-2000) and following (2012-2014) the target period are also investigated.

Starting as an obscure set of practices often associated with religious fundamentalism before the mid-1990s, IF had become a “mainstream” alternative by the turn of the century. A second interpretive break then emerged with the advent of the subprime crisis in 2007-2008, which increasingly conferred to IF an ethical component. Interestingly, both narratives still exist concurrently in the media, even in post-crisis discussions.

The discussion in this paper allows us to explain the findings of the most recent surveys on this topic, which put forward the complex, and sometimes even contradictory, understandings of what IF stands for in global markets.

This is the first archival research on the topic of IF in international markets. Besides bringing to the discussion an interesting historical perspective, it also draws attention to the growing importance of Islam-based financial products in traditionally secular markets.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a real asset management investment appraisal of the performance of containerships as a primary segment within international shipping, to facilitate Islamic equity investment through a shipping fund. The objectives are to evaluate the risks and returns of shipping under the framework of Islamic equity finance, and to analyze the performance of investing in containerships over the long term, to appeal to retail and institutional clients of Malaysian asset management institutions.

Accordingly, the methodology adopts an investment analysis of a full population of historical data over a period of 20 years, to evaluate performance involving a maritime return on investment (MROI), internal rate of return (IRR), net yield and standard deviation measures of risk and return.

The findings reveal that while earnings are volatile in comparison to capital market expectations, unlevered, tax-free returns on containership investments outperform financial and other real assets.

Shipping is a strong growth industry with about 84 per cent of global trade carried out by the international shipping industry. The problem is that many Islamic asset management institutions and investors have essentially no exposure to Islamic investment in international shipping.

However, shipping is a highly capital-intensive industry, and currently 75 per cent of ship lending has been conducted by European banks and financed on a conventional basis. Post-financial crisis, ship owners, ship lenders and shipyards have all been exposed to the impact of over-levered balance sheets and debt finance. There is a demand for alternative sources of finance.

By communicating risk and reward more effectively, retail and institutional investors, as well as Islamic finance institutions, will realize that the social benefit of equity finance on the basis of profit sharing is more efficient at allocating investible resources than debt finance at interest, thereby increasing investment and economic growth.

The significance is that Islamic equity finance, rather than debt at the time-value of money, should enhance the development of international shipping.

This study aims to analyze the behavior of Indonesian Muslim consumers toward halal wellness services, especially to determine the effect of Islamic attributes providing halal wellness services and customer religious commitment as a moderating variable on customer satisfaction and loyalty.

The study was carried out by surveying 260 respondents from 13 Muslim salon outlets in the Jabodetabek area as research samples. Furthermore, a quantitative approach with moderated regression analysis is used as an analytical tool to test the research hypothesis.

The study found that embedding Islamic attributes in a halal service correlated positively with customer satisfaction. Four of the six dimensions of Islamic attributes that provide halal wellness services have a significant influence on customer satisfaction and loyalty. In addition, it was found that the moderating effect of religious commitment variables was only significant on two Islamic attributes, namely, Muslim goods and services and halal labeled products.

This study was conducted with samples taken from only one brand of muslimah salon in Jabodetabek area. So that generalization needs to be done with caution.

The paper includes implications for the marketing strategy of halal wellness services industry including the importance of experiential marketing strategy, the moderation between fiqh law compliance and customer convenience and the service customization based on customer preferences.

This paper gives an understanding of the behavior of halal wellness service users on how halal service attributes affect user satisfaction and loyalty.

The efficiency of unit trust (UT) funds from quite number of contexts across the globe has been highlighted in previous literature. Yet, there is dearth of research that empirically investigates the factors that influence the selection of UT funds by retailers, particularly in the Malaysian setting. This paper aims to narrow this research gap, whereby perception of past performance, perception of funds’ commitment to Shari’ah compliance, perception of funds’ size and perception of risk tolerance are hypothesized to exert statistically significant influences on the selection of UT funds by retail investors in Malaysia.

The empirical study uses a quantitative research approach whereby survey data have been sampled from 140 retail investors from around Malaysia, using simple random sampling technique. Data analysis has been carried out using multiple regression analysis employing SPSS version 20.0.

The empirical research finds that perceptions of fund size and Shari’ah compliance significantly influence the selection of UT among retail investors in Malaysia. However, there were no enough evidences to support the claims that perceptions of past performance and of risk tolerance influence the selection of UT among Malaysian retail investors.

This research is cross-sectional and uses data from Malaysia only.

The findings from this research will have enormous implications for policymakers in the accounting and finance sectors of government and private financial institutions and for individual professional Malaysian investors. In particular, investors in Malaysia and potential investors abroad may be enlightened by the findings of this research. Again, Islamic financial institutions may use the findings to boost their performance improvement interventions, thus, having clear evidence of the actual factors that influence retailers in the Malaysian setting.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research is among the pioneering research works that empirically explores the factors that influence Malaysian retailers to invest in UT funds. This research is expected to stimulate further research in this novel area.

The purpose of this study is to identify the determinants of the intended use of Islamic banking and financial services by US Muslims. It builds on the plethora of studies primarily conducted in Muslim-majority countries.

An extended theory of planned behavior model was tested using structural equation modeling. The hypothesized paths were positive attitude, positive subject norms, perceived behavioral control, greater Islamic religiosity and lower perceived cost of being Muslim. A sample size of n = 251 was analyzed.

The analysis showed that positive attitudes toward Islamic financial services were found to be statistically significant (p < 0.001), and its path was the strongest. The higher Muslim identification path was trending toward being statistically significant (p < 0.086). The analysis also showed that lower perceived cost of being Muslim path was statistically significant (p < 0.035), but in the opposite hypothesized direction. No support was found for the effect of positive subjective norms or perceived behavior control hypotheses.

The study was exploratory in nature and has limitations, including some discriminant validity problems.

The paper includes recommendations for US Islamic banking and financial services providers to develop more effective market segmentation and targeting, as well as integrated marketing communication strategies.

This paper fulfills a void in research on Islamic marketing in the West, particularly the USA, a country with a nominal Muslim population.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the nexus between preferences of customers toward operations of Islamic windows from conventional banks. However, financial institution system of any country has a dominant importance for its growth level. This study makes a comparative analysis and nexus among Islamic windows of conventional banks, Islamic and conventional banks.

A well-designed questionnaire has been made and distributed among three types of bank customers to get their perception and preference regarding services qualities and operations from all three types of financial institutions. This study used statistical package of social sciences software for data analysis.

The results revealed that customers from Islamic windows have serious dispute on its Shariah-compliant regulation and fifty one per cent (51 per cent) of customer did not trust on the member of Shariah board. The mid age of customers preferred the services of Islamic windows, as it has multi-dimensional options for customers. Finally, customers from almost all three types prestigious that technology has found a significant impact for better service qualities and found a positive change in customer behavior.

This study is a first ever attempt in its nature to investigate that the customer’s preferences and different operations exist in three types of banking system in Pakistan. This study also helps to policymakers regarding customer needs and wants to provide better services.

Muslim consumers’ tendency to patronize stores with Halal images and purchase genuine Halal products is closely related to their effort to maintain Islamic identity, and this is further supported by many empirical data. Therefore, this paper aims to examine the relationships between attitude, subjective norm, perceived behavioral control and Halal principle knowledge and their effect on Muslim consumers’ behavioral intention to patronize retail stores. On top of that, the mediating effect of Halal image on these relationships is also investigated.

Data were analyzed using multiple and hierarchical regression analysis to test the model via the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) software among 480 valid samples of Muslim consumers.

Empirical results of the hierarchical regression analysis and the Sobel test revealed that there is a significant mediating effect of Halal image on the relationship between consumers’ attitude, subjective norm and perceived behavioral control of consumers’ behavioral intention to patronize retail stores. Consumers with high attentiveness of the stores’ Halal image have a positive impression of the stores, a high motivation to patronize and, without any conditions, may follow through their intention to patronize the retail stores.

This research study offers guidelines to the retailers, marketers and the authorities in enhancing marketing strategies and the implementation of stricter Halal consumption laws. Hence, this research puts forward the following strategies: adopting Halal marketing strategy, promoting Halal images in retail stores and reinforcing Halal principle knowledge in the mind of consumers.

The main theoretical contribution relates to the insertion of the Halal image as a mediating variable in the matter of Muslim consumers’ behavioral intention to patronize Halal stores in Malaysia. An inspection of the effect of Halal principle knowledge on Muslim consumers’ behavioral intention to patronize retail stores is also rewarding.