Page 182 - Aamir Rehman - Dubai & Co Global Strategies for Doing Business in the Gulf States-McGraw-Hill (2007)

166 Dubai & Co.

marketing strategies being pursued. Hundreds of multinational
brands are on display, including US, European, and Asian labels.
Naturally, each multinational has taken its own unique approach
in customizing for the market, and some customize much more
than others.
Much of Deira City Centre—in fact, much more than one sees in
other GCC cities—caters to expatriates and tourists. Stores display, for
example, risqué “club gear” of interest to expatriates and tourists par-
taking of Dubai’s uncommonly liberal nightlife. Stores here also fea-
ture more sweaters and heavy coats than are seen elsewhere, likely
targeting tourists from colder climates who are passing through. Few
store names are in Arabic alone: this mall is clearly a bilingual place.
The photograph in Figure 6.3, taken in December 2006, illus-
trates the extent to which the mall seeks to make expatriates and
tourists feel at home. The large Christmas tree clearly caters to
tourists on winter holiday: only a small proportion of UAE
residents (including expatriates) celebrate Christmas. Tourists from
the UK, Australia, and continental Europe most certainly do.
Elsewhere in the mall, one would see promotional staff dressed as
Santa’s helpers. Considering Dubai’s shopping demographics,
these distinctly non-Arabic measures can make business sense. 3
A noncustomization strategy can be a sound approach if a
multinational’s target audience in the Gulf does not require Arabic
and if the brand appeal is already so deeply tied to foreign affilia-
tion that using the Arabic language would be counterproductive.
Noncustomization is, of course, convenient and cost-effective:
it requires no incremental marketing design. This efficiency is espe-
cially helpful when either (1) a great deal of money has been spent
on fixed costs such as global promotions (e.g., very expensive
celebrity endorsers) and other global expenses (print advertising,
shipping, etc.) or (2) the estimated market demand in the GCC
countries is too small to justify spending meaningfully on market-
ing. Very minor adjustments, however, such as those involving lan-
guage, can be done at a fairly low cost.
While noncustomization has its merits, it also has significant
drawbacks and limitations. The most fundamental of these is that it
can make the multinational seem too foreign and therefore a misfit
for the region. This risk appears principally in consumer-facing
goods, where a sense that such goods belong in a community is