The connection between marketing, analytics, and business growth is gradually becoming explicit in the Middle East – North Africa (MENA) region. The region has extremely low expenditure on Research and Development (R&D), barring the Gulf Cooperation Countries (GCC), and has mostly think-tanks or policy institutes aligned with universities, that is, that do not undertake marketing. Companies also have not fully utilized marketing; the ones that have offer basic services, not advanced, complex marketing campaigns.
Underpinning this is a sharp dearth in human resources, funding, and business strategy expertise, meaning many firms have not fully reaped the benefits of marketing and there are few organizations that are concerned with social sciences. The job market in the MENA region is disproportionately concentrated in the STEM fields, mainly engineering and medicine, so such job functions as research, consulting, marketing, or due diligence are disproportionately under-developed– and are very needed. Universities in the region focus on the STEM fields, thereby neglecting social sciences; they teach marketing also from mostly a theoretical point. Social sciences and marketing in MENA also have a heavily gendered, limited market in the region, again barring the GCC. “Most students in sociology and generally Arts faculty classes are women, at a ratio of 96 or 97 to 3 women to men,”
one Professor of Sociology opined. Marketing also does not have the institutional maturity that exists in the United States or the United Kingdom.
The flip-side is that marketing and social media represent a huge growth opportunity in the region. With almost 50% of the job market in MENA concentrated in engineering and architecture, such fields as statistics, marketing, human resource management, social media, and others have potential. For example, many engineering and other firms, in Jordan and Saudi Arabia, now post jobs in social media and marketing. Marketing companies also have sprung up, offering everything from Web design, logo design, to SEO campaigns.
What this means is that marketing is slowly becoming a mainstream and needed industry, especially in the GCC, even if the appropriate talent or human resources are still not abundant. This growth of marketing may begin to flip the coin so that even the “high-achieving” job-seekers in MENA may pursue marketing and business development, instead of STEM. In fact, this growth of marketing can attract both sexes and the predominant careers, again engineering and medicine, can begin ceding the way to business skills and functions. Marketing, business strategy, and business development hail from both business administration and social sciences, fields that are not as established as STEM. Historically, high-achieving students in higher education pursued the STEM fields, relegating those with less achievement to other fields. This has impoverished the business fields and generated a vicious cycle.
There is now in most MENA countries a sharp division between university graduates and the rapidly evolving job market. The traditional majors are no longer enough or even necessary since business specialties are emerging. Universities need to invest in social sciences and companies need to invest in their marketing, social media, and public relations efforts. Companies, at least in Jordan and Saudi Arabia, seem to keep marketing expenses to a minimum and their standards for marketing performance are
too basic.
In other words, the region needs rehabilitation in marketing and social sciences. As of 2018, this is slowly changing. Both brand-name businesses and family ones are now realizing that marketing, vitally social media, are integral to business. In the long-term, audience segmentation, integrated marketing campaigns, and other advanced functions will become indispensable. Marketing and social sciences will affect the very “bottom line” of most businesses.