Since the development of Islamic banking, negative concerns prevail because of low customer awareness and understanding of Islamic banking and its financing methods. Trust and credibility factor for Islamic products are low. Operational concerns exist specifically about staff and scholars. A perennial challenge facing all Islamic financial institutions is how to communicate with customers in a way that will affects their behaviours or attitudes.For developing relationship with consumers, it is imperative for Islamic banks to remove all negative concerns and doubts by developing educative and effective marketing strategy utilizing all their contact channels. Specifically, in reaching to the consumers effectively, Websites can be utilised in giving appropriate, sufficient, and relevant information. The distinctive aspect of this paper is that it analyses the Islamic bank websites which were evaluated against criteria developed through a literature review of existing Islamic banking challenges. Research questions were developed to investigate the issue. This research is Qualitative and descriptive in nature, as two Islamic banks websites of Malaysia were accessed in 2010 and 2014 in order to understand the differences and similarities with regard to website structures, content, information, colour theme and target audiences of marketed web products. By investigating these factors descriptively, this research provides practical suggestions to design effective webpages or promotional messages to educate and inform customers of the distinction between Islamic banking products and services, and those offered by conventional banks. Moreover, along with serving marketing purposes, this study also believes that Islamic banks can use their websites for recruiting, informing consumers about their social activities, and the Sharīʿah board.

This study explores the barriers and challenges faced by Saudi women entrepreneurs along with the motivational forces that drives them towards entrepreneurship. This study employs a qualitative research design, and is based on the interview of 11 Saudi women entrepreneurs and includes a review of data on the motivational factors and challenges faced by them using interpretative phenomenological analysis. Research participants’ perspectives have been quoted for each distinct theme that emerged from the interview finding. The factors motivating Saudi women towards entrepreneurship have been identified as passion, identification of opportunity, dissatisfaction and family support. Barriers that are exclusive to Saudi women entrepreneurs are difficulty in maintaining work-life balance, lack of business networking, limited access to financial resources, lack of understanding of business-related tasks and functions, fear of deception, lack of trust, reservation about work-related travel, recruitment and training issues like lack of experienced and trained Saudi workers and negative attitude and non-willingness to work under female leadership. Decision-makers in government and other relevant organisations can develop a solid framework of focussed agendas, policies and measures to address the barriers identified in this study. Arab countries especially Saudi Arabia can use these results to fully utilise the entrepreneurial skills of Saudi women to boost economic growth and development. This pioneering study reveals the intricacy of Saudi women entrepreneurs’ experiences in the presence of gender-bias and internalising socio-cultural values and attributed gender roles during the formation of their entrepreneurial identities through a unique non-western viewpoint.

Islamic Banks Service Innovation Quality: Conceptual Model. Customer perspectives and satisfaction level are considered important for analysing the performance of Islamic bank service quality. Sufficient researches has been done to explore customer perception and satisfaction level with Islamic banking service quality, however there is lack of data to compare and find the similarity in understanding the main determinant attributes needed for Islamic banking service quality. The purpose of this paper is to describe and integrate the results of existing wealth of research on service quality in Islamic banks. After weighing up all the views from existing research, common findings, concerns will be discussed. This research did not find much of information or studies indicating toward innovation in Islamic banking service quality. Thus based on review of the literature this paper suggests main key attributes of service for Islamic banks (RIBA Service IQ). This research strongly asserts that sincere motivation, truthful intention, dynamic and practical service innovation of quality approaches can uplift Islamic financial brand.

In recent years, corporate social responsibility (CSR) has become a vital component and mainstream approach to business, with much attention devoted to the implications of CSR policies and practices. Yet firms still diffuse CSR initiatives without fully understanding the well-being of their stakeholders and the reactions towards the firm. The success of CSR can be determined by understanding consumer behaviours, thoughts, beliefs, attitudes, and experiences. In the case of Islamic banking, a sceptical attitude and atmosphere of distrust has prevailed because consumers are unable to distinguish between Islamic and conventional banking products and systems, and struggle to find effective CSR outcomes through Islamic banks. In a competitive environment where CSR differentiation and credibility are ongoing challenges, this research poses a fundamental question on what should constitute a CSR strategy of Islamic banks to develop trust. Using a general inductive qualitative approach, pertinent issues related to CSR and Islamic banks were extracted from 75 existing articles, to propose a framework using Quranic terms (ikhlas, istiqama, ta’awaun, tazkiya) to construct a favourable image of Islamic banks and CSR initiatives. The research findings suggest that this framework is capable of tackling consumers’ negative attitude and scepticism of Islamic banks and CSR activities.