Abstract:

The Arab speaking region has distinct social and cultural characteristics which reflect its Islamic foundations and have profound implications for the research procedures which, until now, could be deployed successfully in its markets. A prime responsibility of the researcher working in the Middle East has always been to generate the most appropriate interviewing and selection methodologies for this research environment. To ignore Islamic traditions in the interests of cross-regional research comparability would be counter-productive, since the focus of all consumer research should be consumers and their social and cultural milieu, rather than data collection techniques used in other world regions. This paper deals with certain key methodological issues for the researcher working or commissioning research in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA region) and seeks to address the question of whether this region is now changing in a way to allow alternative interviewing methodologies closer to those used elsewhere to be adopted in the region.