From duty to choice: Marketing Islamic banking in Malaysia

Abstract

A content analysis of print advertisements and customer websites of Islamic banks in Malaysia, this paper examines the changing marketing and branding landscape of Islamic banking products and financial services. When Islamic banks were first set up in Malaysia in the early 1980s, their advertising material emphasized the religious obligations of Muslims to save and invest with shari'a-compliant financial products and services. Amid the ongoing liberalization of Malaysia's Islamic banking sector since the mid-1990s, a transformation of this marketing strategy appears to have taken place. Islamic banks no longer emphasize a priori the religious imperatives or even the ethical principles that underlie their business model. Rather, they tend to stress that banking according to the principles of the shari'a is an economically rational alternative to the conventional system. Islamic banks in Malaysia portray themselves not simply as Islamic banks, but as better, more profitable and safer alternatives to the crisis-prone conventional, interest-based banking sector. This paper examines this transformation, and seeks to relate the three broad trends it has identified in the advertisement of Islamic banking services to the wider socio-cultural, economic and political changes that have been under way in Malaysia since the late 1960s.