The Interest in Islamic Finance Contracts in Saudi Arabia as Viewed by Google Trends

Abstract

Several Islamic contracts have been used by Islamic banks to cover the financial needs of their customers. The contracts include Murabahah, Ijarah, Tawarruq, Mudarabah, Musharakah, Salam, and Istisna'. In the current study, the interest in Islamic financial contracts in the past 5 years (2014)(2015)(2016)(2017)(2018)(2019) in Saudi Arabia as viewed by Google trends was examined. The interest in Murabahah showed increases with the years, whereas decreases in the interest of Tawarruq, Salam Mudarabah were observed in the last years. However, the interest in Ijarah and Istisna' was stable during the examined period. With respect to Musharakah, the interest decreased with years until 2017 then it showed slight increases in 2018 and 2019. Differences in the interest of financial contracts were also observed across different regions of Saudi Arabia. The interest in Ijarah, Tawarruq and Istisna" was higher in Riyadh, whereas the interest in Murabahah and Musharakah was higher in Ha"il than other Saudi regions The present findings can be used by Islamic banks to shape their financing services according to observed interest trends and across different regions of Saudi Arabia.

How popular is Islamic finance in the USA? Findings from Google Trends

“…The geographical region was restricted to the USA. The Google Trends displays the relative frequency of the entered search term to overall search volumes in a given time/geographical area (Aldarabseh, 2019b;Swallow and Labbé, 2010). The generated relative frequency scaled from zero to 100 based on the week that showed the highest number of searches of that particular term.…”