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The purpose of this paper is to explore the reasons behind customers' selection of Islamic mortgage in Sabah, Malaysia and present factor and cluster analyses to identify the importance of choice criteria for Islamic mortgage selection. The choice criteria among Sabahans are investigated along with their gender, age group, religion, monthly income, and ethnicity.

A total of 250 bank customers responded to a survey addressing the choice criteria for Islamic mortgage providers. It is important to address the criteria in order to make sure the service providers are able to come up with attractive package of Islamic home financing to their prospective customers. Of these, only 211 questionnaires are usable, which gives us a response rate of 84.4 percent. No extra efforts are conducted in order to increase the number of respondents. Non‐probability, convenience sampling is implemented. This paper uses a quantitative study similar to what employed by Lymperopoulos et al. and by Devlin. Frequencies, descriptive, factor and cluster analyses are used to analyze the data.

A cluster analysis indicates that bank customers can be divided into three clusters. Members of cluster 1 reported a tendency to select mortgage bank on the basis of “service provisions” while the members of cluster 2 reported a tendency to select mortgage bank on the basis of “elements of Shariah and Islamic principles.” While those of members in the cluster 3, almost entirely had lower mean scores as compared to other clusters. Nevertheless, the members of this cluster reported a greatest tendency to choose Islamic mortgage provider on the basis of “pricing.”

The paper has addressed three limitations that provide opportunities for other researchers to explore them in depth in the future in the similar field of Islamic home financing. The limitations are presented in the conclusion's part.

With regard to implications, this paper offers inputs for management decision among Islamic mortgage providers (i.e. Islamic banking institutions such as full‐fledged Islamic banks, conventional banks with Islamic windows and conventional banks with Islamic subsidiaries). In addition, this paper adds to the literature in the area of home loans/financing.

This paper offers the choice criteria for Islamic mortgage providers provides useful information on the Islamic mortgage providers' selection among Sabahans. This paper indeed provides useful information on the main choice criteria that affect why Sabahan choose Islamic mortgage providers.

This paper aims to explore public perceptions on marketing‐related issues of Islamic mortgages, which can help to identify the contents of the best marketing strategies for financial institutions wishing to promote Islamic mortgages among the Muslim community in the UK. In doing so, the access issues of the Islamic mortgages and how to effectively raise awareness among the Muslim community is discussed. The paper also aims to discuss the integration of the Islamic mortgage and to investigate the importance of staff confidence and the acceptability of promoting the Islamic mortgage by a non‐Muslim sales person. Furthermore, the role of religion, the Muslim households' consumer preferences and the prospect of Islamic mortgage providers' cross‐selling Islamic mortgage products to the Muslim customers are also discussed.

The principal method used to gather primary data is a questionnaire survey conducted with Muslim households in East London. From a total of 350 questionnaires distributed, 270 were returned, of which 250 were fully completed, thereby yielding a response rate of about 77 per cent.

The findings indicate that wider social factors and lifestyle choices may be increasing the demand for Islamic mortgages. The paper also argues that there is scope in the UK to expand the market for Islamic products and services to non‐Muslims as well if effective and sound marketing strategies are implemented.

The sample size can be extended to have more reliable results. In addition, future research should consider other geographical locations in the UK to provide diversity in terms of participants.

The findings of the research can provide valuable information for the Islamic mortgage market in the UK but also render information for Islamic finance service providers in shaping their marketing strategy in relation to Islamic mortgages.

The paper utilises primary data from a particular case, which provides valuable findings in relation to participants' perceptions on Islamic mortgage and its marketing‐related issues. It also provides the elements of an effective marketing strategy for the marketing of Islamic mortgages in the UK. Therefore, in addition to being an academic paper appealing to academic inquiry, it has practical implications for the industry as well.

This paper presents an analysis of customer choice criteria in the home loans market in the UK. In particular, the study investigates the relative importance of choice criteria according to consumers and also analyses differences in the importance of choice criteria with respect to a number of demographic and related factors. A quantitative study drawing data from 4,200 participants is employed. The study shows that choosing a home loan institution on the basis of professional advice is the most frequently cited choice criterion, closely followed by interest rates. Differences in the importance of choice criteria with respect to gender, class, household income, educational attainment, ethnicity and financial maturity are apparent.

Complex decision-making is often supported not by single messages but by multichannel communication packages that need to be evaluated in their own right. The purpose of this paper is to present a new analytic approach to this package evaluation task combining textual analysis, functional analysis (FA) and media synchronicity theory.

The authors combine textual analysis, FA and media synchronicity and demonstrate this in a single case analysis of a multichannel communication package offering mortgage information.

When applied to a mortgage communication package for consumers, the evaluation reveals significant problems concerning the contents and timing of mortgage information and the channels chosen to convey it.

This paper outlines a new direction for evaluating multichannel consumer information, in that it does not focus on user channel preferences but on channel requirements stemming from the communicative task to be performed.

This paper enables designers to optimize the design of multichannel communication packages and its individual components to support customer’s decision-making processes with regards to complex products.

Improving information to guide complex decision-making processes leads to better informed consumers.

Research into effective multichannel communication within marketing is in its infancy. This paper offers a new perspective by focusing on channel requirements stemming from the communicative task rather than consumers’ channel preferences.

The purpose of this paper is to understand consumers’ willingness to choose Islamic mortgage products as a way to help Islamic banks tap into the Islamic mortgage sector in Malaysia.

Using the Theory of Interpersonal Behaviour as a point of departure, this study proposes a framework that examines factors influencing consumers’ willingness to choose Islamic mortgage products. A total of 282 usable surveys are obtained from customers of Islamic banks and the data were analysed using partial least squares.

The results indicate that affect, social factors, and facilitating conditions influence willingness to choose Islamic mortgages. Besides these factors, the added factors, namely, perceived risk and perceived financial benefit, significantly influence consumers’ willingness to choose Islamic mortgages.

This study is confined to two public universities in Malaysia. Further testing of the proposed model across different population groups is necessary to determine the generalisability of this study’s findings. This study applies consumer factors such as affect, social factors, facilitating conditions, perceived risk and perceived financial benefit. Further testing on other factors is needed to expand the findings in this area.

The results could help bank managers make improved decisions about the factors which they need to effectively market Islamic mortgage products. This study provides insights and guidance for bank managers to manage Islamic mortgage products.

The main contribution of this paper is a proposed framework of consumers’ willingness to choose Islamic mortgage products which takes into account the key factors necessary to predict consumers’ demand.

The purpose of this study is to investigate barriers to accessing mortgages in Nigeria’s urban housing markets with the main focus on Kaduna State. The objective was to establish the diverse factors that constitute barriers to urban households’ access to mortgages for homeownership from the perceptions of households, mortgage lenders and the Federal Mortgage Bank of Nigeria.

The study used cross-sectional survey with triangulation of results. To enable the triangulation, three new samples were developed from 450 surveys with households and 10 completed by lenders, both in Kaduna State and one survey undertaken by the Federal Mortgage Bank of Nigeria. Data were collected with questionnaires designed on five-point Likert model. Data analysis utilized descriptive statistics and one-sample t-test. Triangulation enabled cross-validation of the results.

The barriers include low incomes and savings which constrain households’ ability to pay mortgage instalments and deposits, respectively, high interest rates, poor access to land, inability of potential borrowers to provide certificates of occupancy on their land, inadequate loanable funds and inadequate number of mortgage lending institutions.

The study has the potential to provide a basis for mortgage market reforms. Mortgage market reforms should be encompassing because it requires action in some other sectors.

The social implication of the study is the possibility of motivating actions to deal with the diverse barriers to accessing mortgages which have constituted deterrents to households from realizing their homeownership aspirations and enjoying the benefits of homeownership and consequently contributing to inadequate housing and poor living conditions.

The study provides distinctive insight into Nigeria’s mortgage market by integrating the views of various stakeholders on a subject of social and economic significance. It contributes to the evidence-base around mortgage market reforms in Nigeria.

This study investigates the nature of customer‐supplier interaction that currently exists within Irish retail financial services. Specifically, issues relating to the role, meaning and importance of financial service interaction within the context of current demand‐ and supply‐side relationship marketing issues are explored. Although the literature proposes that the relationship marketing (RM) approach is particularly applicable to the financial services sector, the research findings raise questions as to the appropriateness of general RM theory to the current nature of interaction between consumers and their financial services providers. In an age of increased depersonalisation and automation impacting upon financial service quality and delivery, the paper questions the relevance of the “relationship” concept and proposes the notion of an “experience” as a far more relevant and meaningful construct. The nature and importance of this experience to consumers is explored and three levels of customer experience are conceptualised which are identified as brand, transactional and relationship experience.

This paper aims to examine the influence of neoliberalist deregulation on the rash of demutualisations of the 1990s. It explores the extent to which the demutualisation of two building societies – Northern Rock and Bradford & Bingley – and their subsequent demise in the wake of the credit crunch exemplify key features of the neoliberalist experiment, with a particular focus on their post‐mutualisation business models.

The analysis draws on literature that examines the neoliberal development of the financial sector and examines the media coverage of the financial crisis of 2007/2008 to study the discursive and material conditions of possibility for the development and implosion of the business models used by Northern Rock and Bradford & Bingley.

The paper argues that the demutualisation of Northern Rock and Bradford & Bingley was part of a broader neoliberal movement which had processes of financialisation at its centre. By converting into banks, former building societies gained greater access to wholesale borrowing, to new types of investors and to the unrestricted use of financial instruments such as securitisation. The collapse of Northern Rock and Bradford & Bingley is interpreted in the light of their access to these new sources of funding and their use of financial instruments which were either unavailable for, or antithetical to, the operation of mutual societies.

The paper comments on the contemporary features and current effects of the 2007/2008 crisis of liquidity, whose full long‐term consequences are uncertain. Further research and future events may offer confirmation or serve to qualify or correct its central argument. The intent of the paper is to provide a detailed analysis of the conditions and consequences of building society demutualisation in the context of the neoliberal expansion of the financial sector that resulted in a financial meltdown. It is hoped that this study will stimulate more critical analysis of the financial sector, and of the significance of financialisation more specifically.

The paper adopts an alternative perspective on the so‐called “subprime crisis”. The collapse of Northern Rock and Bradford & Bingley is understood in relation to the expansion, and subsequent crisis, of financialisation, in which financial instruments such as collateralized debt obligations and credit default swaps were at its explosive centre, rather than to the expansion of subprime lending per se. Demutualisation is presented as a symptom of neoliberalism, a development that, in the UK, is seen to have contributed significantly to the financial meltdown.

The Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act calls for substantially increased government regulation. Whether those regulations are, in some sense, appropriate is a function of whether the benefits of the increased regulation exceed the costs. Those costs and benefits, however, are probably impossible to measure, at least at this early stage of the implementation of the Dodd–Frank reforms. On the other hand, financial professionals who regularly deal with governmental regulations probably have a good sense of the costs and benefits based on their own experience with other similar regulations. This chapter reports the result of a survey of high-level auditors and CFOs regarding their perceptions of the costs and benefits of the main parts of the financial regulatory reform incorporated into the Dodd–Frank legislation. It concludes that there is support among these individuals for some aspects of Dodd–Frank, but no consensus.

The paper surveys existing theory of e‐commerce business models and associated conceptual instruments. It employs three original case studies of SMEs using e‐commerce to demonstrate the dynamic nature of e‐commerce business models for networked SMEs. The idea of evolutionary business planning based upon Molina’s sociotechnical constituency approach and the diamond of alignment is introduced.