An exploratory study on the nature of cross selling in the Islamic financial services industry (IFSI)

Cross selling is one of the most prominent approaches towards retaining customers in conventional financial industry. The objectives include increase in types of products purchased per customer, increase switching cost, improve market share, long term customer relationship, profitability for financial institutions, and saving cost for customers. Some issues of cross selling have received research attention in conventional finance industry; however, there is a lack of critical exploration of cross selling in the unique context of the Islamic financial services industry (IFSI). This research has endeavored to explore cross selling in the unique context of Islamic financial institutions. This study claims to be the first in its kind to explore the reasons why cross selling is practiced in IFSI, and first to explore how cross selling is practiced in IFSI and the challenges it faces in implementing cross selling. This study also claims to be the first to explore how cross selling in IFSI compares to cross selling in conventional banks.17 Executive and senior managers were interviewed from 9 Islamic banks in the UAE. Thematic analysis was employed to extract meaningful data from the interviews. The findings of this research implies that cross selling in IFSI, in practical terms, is not exactly the same as in conventional banks due to the sharia inherent issues and differences of policies around working mechanisms within IFSI. The study finds that these issues have further complicated the standardisation and regulatory issues in IFSI for cross selling purposes. This has further manifested into processing and product development issues and as a consequence has limited cross selling potential in IFSI to a certain extent. The study proposes a cross selling conceptual framework for future managerial implication and a guide map for future research to empirically establish the relationship between the elements that interplay to influence cross selling efforts in IFSI