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This chapter compares the returns performance of the Islamic mutual funds (IMFs) with that of conventional mutual fund (CMF). It covers both pre- and post-ASEAN financial crisis and global financial crisis data for an overall sample of 128 IMFs and 350 CMFs. It also covers two market cycles from January 1995 to December 1998 and from January 2005 to December 2008.

The net raw returns of all expenses and market risk-adjusted return performance measurements are employed to examine the portfolios’ performance, and to capture the difference movement of the funds based on the particular market trend.

We observed that on average both portfolios outperform the market return. In general, average returns performance of IMFs is not better than the CMFs during bullish and bearish market trend periods. However, the empirical results based on time-series regression model reveal that the IMFs portfolio slightly outperform the conventional counterparts.

The study would benefit the investors and market players to consider IMFs in their portfolio selection, if in future such an expected event may occur.

The study provides insights to regulators and market players who plan to access investment plan in an emerging market, particularly in Malaysia.

This chapter investigates the effect of customer orientation and CRM organization on hotel financial performance. A model of enhancing hotel financial performance through customer satisfaction practices was tested. Customer satisfaction was hypothesized to be a mediator in the relationships between customer orientation and CRM organization and the result being financial performance. The sample consisted of 54 hotels that was made up of three 5-star, fifteen 4-star, and thirty-six 3-star hotels in Ghana. A quantitative deductive approach was employed to gather data using cross-sectional survey, which was analyzed using PLS-SEM to check the validity, reliability and factor loading of the data. The findings revealed that, CRM organization enhances customer satisfaction and financial performance of hotels. Also, customer orientation showed significant positively related to customer satisfaction in the hotels. Surprisingly, the effects of CRM organization and customer orientation on financial performance through customer satisfaction were insignificant. Thus, customer satisfaction failed to mediate the effect of CRM organization and customer orientation on the financial performance of hotels. This suggests that though an effective CRM organization enhances customer satisfaction, it directly affects the financial performance of hotels. The outcomes have useful implications for CRM implementation on hotel financial performance in Ghana.