Browsing by Author "Marhanum Che Mohd Salleh"

The term ‘relationship marketing’ has grown to become a popular subject in marketing literature for the last three decades. The literature indicates the significance of maintaining long-term relationship with customers in ensuring the future of a company. In Asian literature, discussion on relationship marketing has been gaining popularity in recent years. Yet, research conducted on the subject; particularly in Islamic financial institutions, is very limited. This research aims to address the research gap on relationship marketing particularly in the context of the Islamic insurance industry, or Takaful. The theoretical framework of this research; built based on review of past literature, consists of four independent constructs of Islamic relationship marketing (Islamic ethical behaviour, social, structural, and financial bonds), three mediators of relationship quality (relationship satisfaction, trust, and commitment), and customer retention as the sole dependent construct. The framework is tested using primary data obtained from a survey of 755 Family Takaful customers in the Klang Valley. Data gathered was analysed with two statistical analysis software applications: SPSS and AMOS. Results obtained from measurement and structural equation modelling indicate that there were four significant constructs underlined the Islamic relationship marketing practice in Takaful industry namely Islamic ethical behaviour, social, structural, and financial bonds. The practice of these constructs has significantly influenced the retention of Family Takaful customer in future. In addition, results of structural modelling also indicate that customers would remain with the same agent and operator if they act in accordance with Islamic ethics and provide good facilities to them. Furthermore, relationship quality; which is measured by customer satisfaction, trust, and commitment, is regarded as an important factor that strengthens the influence of Islamic relationship marketing practice in ensuring future customer retention. Overall, findings of this research would be an important reference material for market players in the Takaful industry in helping them to strengthen relationship with their customers. Indeed, a strong relationship with customers will contribute to the development of the Takaful industry in the future.

This research proposes an algorithm for Shariah Screening Platform to assist Shariah decision making process in the Islamic Financial Industry. It is designed based on mixed methodology approach which involves both quantitative as well as qualitative method for data collection and analysis. Qualitative approach is first done by collecting sample of bank product proposal and guidelines from the Central Bank of Malaysia for similarity algorithm development. The first test of similarity is done using Levenshtein Distance. Given the algorithm written in Python, this research tests two different sets of text data where the first one is sample of Tawarruq product proposal (query) with Tawarruq policy document (corpus) and the second set is the same Tawarruq proposal (query) with Shariah Governance Policy Document as corpus. A suitable algorithm is built for document similarity analysis using Python programming language. Two measures of similarity is adopted which are Levenshtein Distance and FuzzyWuzzy Package to compare two strings document. These algorithms then are used to develop a Shariah Screening Platform named as SHARSP. The second stage is quantitative approach where data is collected through online structured survey distributed among industry practitioners to observe their view on the proposed Shariah Screening Platform. Based on Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and Technology Readiness Index (TRI) as a measurement tool and multiple regression analysis, majority of the respondents were in view that the proposed SHARSP is useful, and they were prone towards the industry innovation. Overall, outputs of this research are significant to Islamic financial industry in proposing new technology for document screening. It would also add to the existing literatures on Islamic finance especially in the adoption of NLP technology. Keywords: Shariah Screening Platform, Islamic Financial Industry, TAM, TRI, NLP