Faruk Ahmed

Measuring the impact of marketing capability and market control beliefs on marketing strategy intention: a study on travel and tour agents in Malaysia

The aim of this paper is to measure the effect of marketing capability and market control beliefs on marketing strategy intention in strategising Islamic travel and tour packages of travel and tour agents from the perspective of Malaysia. The research revealed that innovativeness, communication, collaboration and cooperation, and control beliefs significantly affect marketing strategy intention through the mediators of marketing capability attitude and market control capability. As a quantitative research approach, from a sampling frame of 420 travel and tour enterprises around Malaysia, 107 respondents were successfully surveyed through a self-administered questionnaire. The result would be useful for practitioners in terms of understanding the effects and magnitude of those variables in developing Islamic travel and tour package in the Islamic tourism industry of the Islamic countries. The effort was employed, for the first time, in this type of perspective. So perhaps, this would have a new horizon of theoretical understanding of the strategic Islamic tourism conceptualisation under the theory of planned behaviour.

Customers’ perception towards ethical advertisements: the mediating role of religiosity from the Malaysian perspective

The fact that potentially unethical advertisements are reaching the marketplace suggests that current methods of evaluating advertisements may be insufficient for some of today’s controversial or innovative advertising strategies. Interestingly, customers are constantly prone to advertisements both directly and indirectly. However, the question arises whether these advertisements are perceived to be ethical in the customers’ mind. Many research experts believe such uncertainty could be an indication of a downfall for the advertising industry. It is worthwhile to be aware of the ethical issues facing advertisers in order to reduce the negative perceptions toward advertisements. Data was collected from 200 Malaysian customers and Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) was used to test the research hypothesis. This research focuses on some major Abstract: perceptions for customers in addressing the perception towards ethical advertising. By examining whether the perceived factors such as, religiosity and emotional appeal positively affect ethical perception, and deceptive messages negatively. The study would provide marketers with a clear understanding on the ethical grounds. Therefore, if the accountable people such as advertisers and businesses work cooperatively and think about the consequences, these problems will be diminished in the future. Several propositions for future research have also been identified.

Customer-based brand equity model for the Shariah-compliant tourism: a conceptual model from the Muslim tourists’ perspective

The authors develop a conceptual model of consumer-based brand equity for the Shariah-compliant tourism from the international Muslim tourist perspective in Malaysia. This model might aid concerned users to understand and measure the Shariah-compliant brand image and equity developed in the Muslim customers’ mind regarding quality from Islamic perspective, Islamic brand identity and personality, haram-halal, Makhru, and devotion to God. Fundamentally it is Islamic value based brand image and equity development concept which is different from a platform of building image and equity from the contemporary ethical marketing. Positive customer-based brand equity entices consumers to buy products or service and the vice versa. Shariah-compliant brand image is a different set of dimensions like brand equity as supported by Shariah-law, whereas in the conventional brand knowledge, favorableness is considered as an important dimension (Keller 2003); that is, only brand image as a main element of knowledge is conceptualized in this model because Islam does not priotize personal favorableness violating Shariah law. Different media channels (Traditional channel-based and Modern channel-based integrated Marketing communication) injecting Shariah-complaint message of tourism into International Muslim tourists based on Shariah-compliant tourism create Shariah-complaint consumer-based brand equity. Instruments appropriate for measuring customer-based brand equity are implied and, possible future research is discussed as well.