EXPLOITING ADVANTAGE OF DEMOGRAPHICS IN ADVERTISEMENT OF BANKING SECTOR; A STUDY ON MUSLIM CONSUMER MARKET IN PAKISTAN

Abstract

Background: The ratio of Islamic banking is rising in Pakistan, it has been claimed that the reason behind its rise is the concept of Islamic values or interest free services associated with it and marketed by the Islamic banks. Objective: The key objective is linked with identifying the role of different demographics been used in advertisement over the perception of the customers on their choice of Islamic banking. Methods: The study incorporated the interview approach where major cities of Pakistan were touched upon to capture the data about the customer perception in these areas, including Karachi, Islamabad and Lahore. Results: The findings reflected that there are major reasons on basis of which the customers value Islamic banking or opt for their services and the reasons are not limited to Islamic values or religiosity based advertisement, in fact there are other factors as well including convenience, account services, location, digital services and recommendations of the people in social structure. Many of the conventional banking system have adopted the Islamic banking products offering to persuade the interest of the consumers and to increase their deposits and assets. They have even adopted different marketing tactics to tackle the interest of the consumers and capture their loyalty with the Islamic values projection in their advertisement or marketing messages. Conclusion: The services attractiveness is associated with different factors like the convenience and the ease of utility, the consumers prefer the services that are easily available to them so that they can put up their feedback when needed and get assistance. However religiosity is also one critical factor due to which the banking systems are moving towards Islamic values because Pakistan is an Islamic republic that shows a prominent attraction towards the Islamic values in the consumer behavior therefore the companies, specially banks need to realize this and specially the banking service providers need to understand this need.