For many years Head and Shoulders was Procter and Gamble's only entry in the shampoo market in the Middle East. H&S was by far the leading anti-dandruff shampoo enjoying very high market shares throughout the Arabian Peninsula. The problem, however, was that the anti-dandruff segment was relatively small and not growing, even contracting in share terms. Clearly the bulk of the shampoo market was likely to stay in the highly fragmented cosmetic segment. And, while P&G was very strong in the small anti-dandruff segment, the Company hardly had a presence in the large cosmetic segment. This paper overviews a step-by-step, building block research program that led to the successful introduction of Pert Plus cosmetic shampoo in the Arabian Peninsula. Pert Plus is a case history of a brand that was conceived to address a consumer need with all of its elements being researched to ensure that the final product mix provided the consumer a highly distinctive and good value-for-money product.
From a Gulf standpoint, no doubt, the successful conclusion of the second Gulf war between the GSied and UM-authorised Multinational Coalition - in which the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) played a central role - and Iraq to force the Saddam Hussain regime to abandon its annexation of Kuwait is the event which has ushered in profound social and political change in the region. After ail. Iraq has been humbled, even if the Saddam Hussain regime has not been destroyed, and a major threat to Gulf security has apparently been removed. At the same time, links between the Gulf region, particularly the Arab oil-producing states of the Gulf, and the West, have been significantly strengthened.
This paper wants to stress that there are real opportunities for business in the 1990s in the Gulf markets. Cease those opportunities. But for success you need quality products, professional and effective marketing, preservarance, patience and some luck. Nothing comes easy. There is a wealth of information in the papers that will be presented to you over the next three days. I wish you a very successful and above all an enjoyable conference.
No market can remain easy and unchallenging for ever. A market's qualitative and quantitative dimensions are altered with movements in environmental factors. Changes in business opportunities and challenges are a never ending process. Markets in the Gulf are no exception to these rules. They have transformed significantly over the period, and the direction and trends will continue to alter their course in future. The implications and challenges of these aspects of the market are clear. Continued alertness and responsiveness to the market's new realities will make marketing effective in its central function of creating satisfied customers. This paper will discuss the Gulf consumers market in the context of the above theme. The presentation will attempt to portray the trends and challenges in the Gulf markets envisioned against the backdrop of the movements in economic environment towards the end of this decade. The presentation will be in two parts: The first section will discuss the broad characteristics and few quantitative and qualitative dimensions that stand behind the present scene of the Gulf markets. The second part will deal with a few major trends in the environment that are likely to impact on the future of these markets, and the related challenges that are visualised towards the end of this decade. The trends and challenges will be explored in relation to selected major environmental factors namely the economic, demographic, market competition and marketing practices in the Gulf countries
In this paper I intend to focus upon the growing significance of new product development and brand strategy within the GCC markets - and indeed, the Middle East as a whole. In order to do so, I will examine first the growth of NPD in Western Europe over the past 20 years and the changes in approach which have both accompanied that growth and in turn resulted from it. I will then go on to describe how we have become involved in the application of new product development techniques in the Middle East markets, the lessons we have learned from this, and our views regarding the significance of new product and brand development in the 1990s.
The high purchasing power of many of the countries in the Arab World has encouraged the increasing presence of a wide variety of multi-national corporations (MNCs) in this region. In the quest for a unified corporate identity and aided by the fact that Arab countries are already unified by one language and one basic culture, MNCs are usually encouraged to utilize one advertising message to address all the peoples of this region. This paper examines why this approach may or may not be appropriate in a market which may not be as homogeneous as some might believe. The paper presents three main approaches to global advertising. The least expensive approach-and the one most often fraught with problems is straight standardization. With straight standardization, a message developed in the Western World is run in other regions with dubbing into the local language. The second approach is regional advertising, which involves the development of one message to be used in one apparently "homogeneous" market consisting of several neighboring countries. The third approach is to use a localized message which is developed and executed in each nation. While this is the most costly option, it provides the least opportunity for costly cross-cultural mistakes. Advances in broadcast technology have compounded the problems of global advertising in the Middle East. Messages aired on television in one country can be seen in other countries. This requires that advertising messages be standardized in countries which broadcast to other Arabic-speaking countries. Such cases present a dilemma for MNCs, which had hoped that the Middle East was one homogeneous region that could be addressed by one main message. This paper presents several case studies which indicate that the Arab market may not be as homogeneous as believed, and which show how the pre-testing of advertising messages can prevent cross cultural problems inherent in global advertising. This paper also presents an example of how "localized" advertising fared well in one Middle Eastern country and tested poorly in a sister country due to the history of each product and its position in each market.
Finding a mnemonic element or proposition is an important and mighty task for developing strategic and effective advertising campaigns. The task becomes ever-increasingly more critical and difficult when the construction of the mnemonics has to firmly relate to the product, the market and the consumers in the Middle East. Mnemonics for the Middle East have to conform to the cultural norms and values, operate within strict religious laws, correspond to perceived product attributes or a unique selling point, address the idiosyncrasies of the market, and plug into the demographic and psychographic segmentation of the market.
"Advertisers' Problems with Agency Sen/ice in the Middle East" is the result of a qualitative application of PDS technology-proprietary to BBDO Worldwide. The Study, recently conducted among a cross-section of decision makers within client companies, provides a hierarchy of "complaints" on several aspects of agency service- -including creative, media and research. These rank orderings are determined by advertiser assessment of the importance of each problem and the frequency of its occurrence. The findings derived from this Study reveal advertiser dissatisfaction related to several of the basic "success factors in the agency business/profession (e.g. talent, initiative, expertise, precision and willingness to invest). Furthermore, proactivity in business relations appears to be lacking, as does the willingness to evaluate work according to objective measurement. This paper was first presented at the ESOMAR Conference in Dubai on 17 February 1992 based on the twenty-seven responses processed at that time. As of this writing, fifty responses have been received. There are no significant differences between the two sets of findings, although a few of the rank orderings have changed.
In the rapidly evolving marketing environment in the Middle East, the communication process is becoming increasingly important and hence so is the need to evaluate the efficiency of an organisation's communication activities. The BUY TEST is an advertising pre-testing technique which is widely used in developing countries for evaluating advertising effectiveness and has been used in the Middle East region for the past 3 years. The paper first briefly describes the BUY TEST approach to advertising pre-testing and examines some of the issues relating to its implementation in Arab countries. It illustrates some of the practical problems faced and the measures which have been adopted to ensure successful and valid data collection, and assesses how the distribution of responses among Arab consumers differs from those in Western countries.
MEMRB has pioneered the introduction of retail audits to the Middle East. The first panels were established in 1971 1972 and since then retail audit panels have been operating continuously in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the DAE. The first tasks that had to be undertaken, as is the case with the establishment of any audit panel, were the following: 1. The enumeration of the universe E. The selection of the panel 3. The operation of the panel.
This study, the first of its kind in the area, provides a model and basis for future studies in order to monitor changes in the moral and social values system overtime, and gives a useful tool for institutions to assess their current policies in the light of value, beliefs and behavioral characteristics of the public with which they are most intimately concerned and to adopt the relevant aspects of their policy accordingly.
This paper describes the experience of AMER in setting up and running retail audits in the region. This is confined to our experience because this is the first open discussion on the subject and we cannot, therefore, refer to the experience of our colleagues. The paper will show firstly the ways in which retail audits in the Middle East are different from those in western Europe. Major areas of difference in data collection are the records of purchases, the use of storage areas and the nationalities of shopkeepers. Major differences in the market structures are the rapid universe and structural changes, large personal export market, significant retail sales by wholesalers in souks, significant sales to other regions or countries by wholesalers, significant institutional sales of consumer packed products, grey imports and handling of new products. Certain measures taken by AMER have contributed to the amelioration of most problems. There still remains the problem of obtaining accurate purchases however, in the instances when the product list is far too long. Our only solution currently is to run parallel panels.