Abstract
The study investigates how Islamic banking customers’ commitment is influenced by trust, relationship expectations, and conflict management and how commitment influence satisfaction. An explanatory research design was applied and responses obtained from Islamic banking customers through self-administered questionnaires. A total of 350 responses could be used for data analysis. An exploratory factor analysis established the interrelationships of the scales used to measure the study’s constructs. Moreover, the measurement and structural models were evaluated. Trust and relationship expectations significantly and positively influence customer commitment, while conflict management has no significant influence on Islamic banking customers’ commitment to their banks. In addition, commitment significantly and positively influences Islamic banking customers’ satisfaction experiences. The tested model confirms the hypothesised relationships between Islamic banking customers’ trust, relationship expectations, commitment, and satisfaction. However, the relationship between conflict management, commitment, and satisfaction was not established. Commitment is linked to trust and relationship expectations, and its outcome, satisfaction. Nevertheless, commitment could not be linked to the antecedent conflict management. The findings could assist retail banks servicing Islamic banking customers in offering in-depth knowledge of how trust and relationship expectations can foster customer commitment, eventually securing customers’ positive satisfaction. The study focused on Islamic banking customers and determined the interrelationships of commitment and related constructs. Few studies have examined the relationship between commitment, its antecedents and outcome from an Islamic banking perspective in an emergent African economy.