Survey on customer related studies in Islamic banking

Purpose – The aim of this paper is to make a critical review of the selected customer related studies in Islamic banking. Design/methodology/approach – In accordance with the aim, the selection criteria is decided to include the studies which have at least one citation according to a publicly available citation count database as of January 2013 and the subjectively selected uncited studies from recent years. According to the selection criteria, in total, 50 journal articles for the period of 1989-2013 are reviewed. Findings – This work identifies the main research subjects, the distribution for these subjects, the general characteristics of research methodologies and methods, the strengths and weaknesses of the studies and the direction of the research area. Practical implications – The foremost contributions of this work are that a researcher or someone who is interested in Islamic banking based customer related studies can attain a detailed picture about the most common research subjects, methodologies, methods and the country in which the study is conducted. And, the general evaluation can be utilized as a directive element for future research. Social implications – The basic implication of this work is the call for more industry connections, i.e. to conduct customer related studies due to the needs, reservations and concerns of Islamic banks. Originality/value – There is not yet a literature review work regarding to the research area of Islamic banking based customer related studies. This work is an attempt to fill in this gap.