The factors affecting customers’ decisions to adopt Islamic banking

Attracting and retaining profitable customers to new and unfamiliar products and services is one of the challenges that the banking fraternity is faced with today. The purpose of this article is to highlight some of the important factors that influence attitude in the Islamic banking. Probability sampling was used and 250 questionnaires were distributed among participants based at a local university in Johannesburg. The results revealed that there is a positive relationship between product awareness, social norms, community influence and attitude towards Islamic banking. Also, the results indicated that most of the respondents were not aware of the Islamic banking. The bank practitioners and marketers were, therefore, recommended to take a focused approach on creating awareness of the Islamic banking. Marketers can target community leaders or opinion leaders in order to shed light on Islamic banking to the rest of their community. Keywords: product awareness, social norms and community influence. JEL Classification: G21, Z13