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Legislative changes have opened up new opportunities for building societies in Britain to operate as retail banks offering a wide range of services. These organisations have operated very successfully in their traditional role for many years and have acquired a favourable generic image. The factors underlying consumer perceptions of the images of building societies are explored and compared with those relating to banks. Findings are presented to suggest that, although the building societies retain a generally favourable image, there are aspects of it that may hinder their successful operation in new markets. There is no evidence of the existence of distinct images for particular societies. Possible marketing implications of the findings are considered.

Reviews the conceptual approaches to marketing which have been developed within socialist countries. Examines in detail some of the consequences of these changes. Suggests that substantial changes are taking place in the USSR and other socialist economies. Draws comparisons with Western economies.

In the first of the eleven essays making up this book, Bevir and Trentmann state the perspective unifying them. Against the rise of a “neo-liberal discourse” idealizing the market as a beneficial coordinating mechanism, Bevir and Trentmann point to the embeddedness of markets.¹ In particular, they assert their cultural embeddedness, arguing that “how precisely any particular state or market operates will depend on how it is governed by a host of beliefs, discourses, practices, and institutions” (p. 10). The first goal of the volume is to provide historical case studies illustrating the richness of past conceptualizations of the relationship between society, markets, and the state (p. 2). The second goal is to reconsider the role played by “agency” in the history of capitalism.² The editors argue against Karl Polanyi that liberals have not always been in favour of markets irrespective of social and environmental concerns, and that peasants and rural elites have not always defended traditional forms of social coordination. The general point is conveyed by the following passage: “The question was, for all these groups, not simply one of support or resistance to markets but about how markets should be embedded within social and political contexts. Social groups and intellectual traditions that were ambivalent about markets also helped to shape the contours and dynamics of capitalist societies” (p. 4). In other words, liberal market economies “arose as embedded within the context of particular types of civil society, which were themselves a contingent product of European history” (pp. 7–8).

This research aims to understand the determinants of consumers' behaviour and motivations to buy taboo items online. Two theoretical lenses, theories of psychological reactance and system justification, are invoked to frame the role of online shopping in shaping consumer behaviour in taboo markets.

A naturalistic inquiry paradigm was used to test a sample of 34 Saudi women who were buying taboo products online.

The determinant of such behaviour is based on differences in understanding the ritual restrictions between people, their society and their country. The four principal attitudes towards restrictions are justifying, accepting, rejecting and reacting. These attitudes frame five motivations: satisfying the restriction, to be unique, but aligned with social norms; breaking social norms; aligning one's self-image to liberal societies; and joy in challenging legal restrictions. The motives for online shopping are justification/utilitarian, to accommodate other restrictions in going to local markets; and reactance hedonic, to break restrictions. These motivations create seven different patterns of online shopping behaviour.

This research contributes to the literature by presenting an alternative perspective on online shopping motivations for taboo products. Furthermore, this research calls for a new socio-psychological theory for understanding the role of technology in influencing consumer behaviour in restrictive societies.

There is no consensus among the experts that welfare can be increased through philanthropy or market is sufficient for the achievement of targeted level of welfare. It is still a main quest that giving visible good to one known fellow is better or market ethos have more positive impact on the society where we have needs of thousands of unknown. Markets, in Hayek’s view, are superior to philanthropy – economically, ethically and epistemologically – because they “confer benefits beyond the range of our concrete knowledge” (Hayek 1988, p. 81) and thus provide “a greater benefit to the community than most direct ‘altruistic’ action”. The same can be expected from the ethical and moral financial institutions having the objective not to only increase their profit but also equally trying to serve the community and society. This paper aims to propose a constructive model in which markets, philanthropy and financial institutions work together to enhance welfare, human freedom, flourishing and voluntary social cooperation.

This paper examines the conceptual dualisms through which commerce – philanthropy relationship (e.g. modern versus Islamic socialism) and the historical–philosophical context in which they were formulated. This helps integrate philanthropy into Hayek’s theory of economic and social order through financial institutions.

This paper explores the foundations of an Islamic view of philanthropic action. This discussion is inspired by the emerging literature of positive psychology and double movement of Polanyi (2001).

Proper data are not available for the Islamic countries.

Without abandoning Hayek’s theory of markets, this study sketches a view of commercial society in which markets and philanthropy (“voluntary giving and association that serves to promote human flourishing”) work together to enhance welfare human freedom, flourishing and voluntary social cooperation under the umbrella of Islam and also explores the different dimensions that how Islamic financial intuitions are becoming the instrument for the incremental change of this integration.

This study guides the policy makers that how social and economic welfare can be increased through the interaction of Islamic financial institutions and philanthropy.

This is an original attempt.

The purpose of the article is to propose and develop a distinct perspective in Islamic marketing research through fusing the Islamic paradigm and the macromarketing theory.

This is a conceptual article that is based on intellectualising and reflecting on differences in understanding what marketing is and what role it plays in society.

The article reveals some commonality of purpose between the macromarketing discipline and Islamic macromarketing, while the latter field of inquiry offers a unique outlook to a number of domain-specific issues.

The characterisation of Islamic macromarketing will open new avenues for future research and will make researchers more theoretically sensitive to ontological and epistemological assumptions that underlie marketing investigations. The limitation of the present discussion is that Islamic macromarketing may not have yet emerged as a separate discipline. Additionally, research on genuinely macromarketing issues in Islamic contexts is very sparse.

Muslim practitioners and managers are to realise that the means and ends of marketing are better understood if viewed from a broader perspective of marketing's impact and consequences on society. By adopting the Islamic macromarketing perspective, public, societal institutions, business stakeholders, and managers will find a better platform to cooperate on maximising the realisation of hasanah (excellence) for all.

This article contributes to the discipline by introducing and characterising a potentially new field of marketing inquiry.

Aspects of research conducted among financial institutions, specifically building societies, banks, charge card operators and insurance groups are discussed. Within the context of trends in, and growing deregulation of, the financial sector, the role is examined of the marketing information systems to enable institutions to differentiate their marketing strategies and services. In particular, the ability to process information to develop precise targeting of customers with the appropriate value added services is considered. The MIS is increasingly crucial to strategic development within, and between, financial sectors. It is contended that size and use of technology are critical to leadership in the personal finance market.

Research on institutional logics has missed the opportunity to understand how and why societies may fundamentally differ in their material and symbolic systems. In this chapter, the authors offer a qualitative examination of the implementation of infrastructure public–private partnership (PPP) projects in the Arab state of Qatar. The authors illustrate how the macrofoundations of Qatari society are rooted in the notion of tribe, an inter-institutional system under which the intertwined institutional orders of the state, the market, and the family have historically developed and operated. Their study sheds light on how these macrofoundations shape the processes and mechanisms that underpin the resistance to the introduction of innovative organizational forms. The chapter makes two contributions. First, it identifies how “foreign” organizational forms rooted in Western institutional orders trigger adverse reactions from societies characterized by different institutional orders. Second, it demonstrates the challenge of implementing PPPs in an institutional context that is unfavorable to them and where actors seek to preserve the supremacy of the extant inter-institutional system.

Whereas much of the renewed interest in Polanyi’s Great Transform-ation speculates that the rebalancing of economy and society he foresaw might now be emerging in the context of the financial crisis, the systems theory perspective adopted in this article concludes that there are good reasons to believe that such a shift may be no closer. From an examination of credit default swaps and corporate bonds, the article suggests that finance may best be understood as an internally differentiated subsystem of the economy and thus perhaps peculiarly proof against efforts to exert control over it. Concluding that Polanyi’s analysis lacks the conceptual tools to cope with contemporary conditions when compared to systems theory, the article nevertheless suggests that his approach may usefully be extended by adding a fourth fictitious commodity – risk – to the familiar trio of land, labor, and money.