The Significant Contribution of Islamic Relationship Marketing Practice in Malaysian Takaful Industry Towards Determining Customer Gratitude, Trust, and Commitment

Abstract

Parallel to the achievement of the Takaful industry, agency system becomes the main medium utilised by the industry to educate the public and assist them about future financial preparation. As a mirror to an Islamic type of insurance, Takaful agents play significant role not only to sell the Takaful products, but also to behave according to the Islamic norms in front of their customers. Thus, this research is conducted to introduce new concept of Islamic relationship marketing (IRM) and investigates its significance towards customer gratitude, trust, and commitment in the industry. A total of 741 of Family Takaful customers in Klang Valley area have participated in the survey conducted in this study. Few statistical analyses were performed to confirm the proposed measures of IRM including descriptive, exploratory factor analysis (EFA), measurement model, and structural equation modelling (SEM) analysis. Through EFA and measurement model, four variables were confirmed to measure the IRM which are Islamic ethical behaviour, social, structural, and financial bonds. Furthermore, these measures of IRM have significantly affected customer gratitude, trust, and commitment via SEM analysis. This study serves as a starting point to promote new approach of marketing in the Takaful industry based on the Islamic norms. It basically aims to tackle the needs of Takaful participants which should be taken care by the Takaful agents as to ensure both of these parties receive benefits in the Takaful contract.

Developing a sustainable model of Waqf-based Takaful for flood victims in Malaysia

“…It is noticed that only a few of the Malaysian operators have practiced Waqf principle in product offering. In the beginning, the first Takaful operator in Malaysia, which is STMB, have offered Takaful product based on Waqf principle in 2002 and it lasted until 2009 as the demand on this product is relatively low (Wan Mohd Al Faizee and Salmy Edawati, 2014).…”

La innovación en el paradigma del marketing relacional

“…Este nuevo enfoque en la gestión de las RC, que favorece los ambientes colaborativos, es explicado por Grönroos (2004) cuando menciona que, a diferencia de las RC basadas en marketing transaccional, donde el núcleo es el producto en su connotación física, el MR se enfoca en la creación de valor, a partir del cual el proveedor y el cliente generan diferentes formas de contactos perceptibles en la relación de intercambio. De esta forma, la colaboración o cooperación se consolida en alianzas (joint ventures) y en el fortalecimiento de relaciones no monetarias (share of heart) (Sheth, 2017); incluso, entre las partes pueden surgir sentimientos como la gratitud (Raggio, Walz, Bose y Garretson, 2014;Hwang y Kandampully, 2015;Mishra, 2016;Salleh, 2016), características consideradas propias de una RC fuerte, dentro del paradigma del MR; esto facilita entre las partes el compartir conocimiento de forma voluntaria e incentiva la adopción de la innovación (Henke y Zhang, 2010).…”

Impacts of Risk Based Capital Regulation in Malaysian Islamic Insurers (Takaful)

“…Islamic insurance (Takaful) is a type of non-banks financial institutions that plays important roles to allocate efficient financial resources, produce liquidity, diversify financial losses and facilitate investment in an economy (Alhassan & Biekpe, 2016;Fah & Sin, 2014;Lee, Low, Chong, & Sia, 2018;Shan, Teng, Kai, & Chuan, 2016). The strong ethics of fairness in the Takaful (Islamic insurance) that leads to social integrity and environmentally friendly focus for developing economic activity have its appeal to a wide range of stakeholders (Salleh, 2016). Recently, the new paradigm of Islamic financial institutions has amazingly attracted the interest of both contemporary and Islamic economist (Sufian, 2009).…”

“…Takaful is a product of Islamic insurance that prohibits generating money from money that forbids interest (Salleh, 2016). It matches deposits and investments to the real underlying assets which has preserved more reliable returns even during the economic downturn.…”

“…Nevertheless, Takaful industry is not completely invulnerable to economic fallouts and still encounters enormous challenges to achieve growth and build mass coverage globally. Recently, the pressure for greater regulation in Takaful industry is increasing, in order to protect consumers and ensure prudent Takaful market conducts around the world (Malaysian Takaful Association Annual Report, 2016;Salleh;. The challenging practices and regulatory concerns that present in Takaful insurance have motivated the relevant regulators to enhance their regulations towards global standards.…”