Scope and Limitations of the Study Islamic Insurance (Takaful)
This study attempts to examine the Islamic insurance (Takaful) services consumption in Kano Metropolis, Nigeria. This is to explore the determinants of Takaful services consumption in the market. Although, some studies had examined economic factors predicting the products consumption, the focus, here, will be the evaluation of non-economic factors.
The researcher’s scope is the area of metropolis/cities, Kano, Kano state, Nigeria. It is a big metropolitan city where most of the ethnic groups in Nigeria are largely represented. Equally, the existing Takaful operators (as observed) concentrate their marketing activities in the metropolis. This might have been due to most of potential and actual customers who are seriously exposed to all dangers and life uncertainty and usually reside in the metropolis.
Due to the embryonic position of the industry, which makes the relevant statistically documented records to be unavailable; the population of this study is infinite and has made application of probability sample to be impossible.
Although, the researcher cannot get the precise total number of actual and potential customers; he is able to obtain the total number of members of staff of Takaful operators in Kano Metropolis, Nigeria. Therefore, the operators’ staff and agents are included in the study.
However, the study has included the insurance companies that are marketing the Takaful services in the state to be among the population. They are African Alliance insurance Plc (introduces the Family Takaful products in 2003), Niger Insurance Plc (introduces the service in 2008/2009) and Corner Stone Insurance Plc (introduces the General Takaful services in
2009).
An attempt was made to collect secondary data from the Takaful operators, but it failed due to the issues of confidentiality and fear of misuse of information. There are some challenges when gathering primary data especially due to the novelty value of the concept of Takaful in the state.
That is why the questionnaire for the study is administered with the assistance of research assistant that is believed to; might have had good relationship with targeted subjects. The researcher also makes additional effort to make sure that the respondents have understood the purpose of the study and have really perceived the questions in line with the researcher’s intent.
The big limitation of the study is inability of researcher to retrieve as many as possible the copies of questionnaire administered to those sampled, especially females. Similarly, the nature of the study’s population makes it impossible to employ powerful statistical tools of analysis that can make generalization of the findings very scientific. The sampling Technique used in the study is purposive judgmental. It is a non-probability sampling method that has suffered problem of being capable to be free from bias.
This has also affected the quality of the findings to be capable of being generalized. But, the researcher has used many non- parametric statistical tools to minimize the effect. In conclusion, however, the researcher has found it difficult to get a required attention from one of the Takaful operator. The operator- company’s attitude toward the researcher shows as if it is hiding something and does not want the public to know much about its Takaful business.