AMRB, IMRB’s venture into West Asia, is now fully operational with its initial hub in Dubai. Having conducted projects for more than a year now, the challenges and complexities of researching what is a veritable mosaic of nationalities and cultures is fascinating.

The markets where we operate in can be clustered into two groups:

• the Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) countries (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman and the UAE); and
• Levant (Lebanon, Syria and Jordan), North Africa (Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia).

The over-riding trend across the region is the seeming paradox between deeply conservative religious beliefs on the one hand and the oil boom-led modernity on the other.

A brief glimpse of the ground realities in these countries and ways and means adopted in conducting market research:

In the GCC Countries...

All of these countries were monarchical in the past, with several of these undergoing a transition from the rustic, Bedouin way of life only in the recent past, coinciding with increased prosperity. They are all dependent on oil revenues and all these countries have a large expatriate population.

Market research per se, though not illegal, is not looked upon favourably, and research in general – especially among the local population – throws up several challenges:

• Quality of information about the universe is sketchy and quite often, outdated making accurate estimation a difficult task.
• The role of women is quite restricted and therefore access to and interviews with them is difficult.
• Door-to-door interviewing is not possible and certain areas are almost inviolate; with post-box numbers being the official mode of access/identification rather than residential addresses.

Working within these constraints, in sample surveys, area based quota sampling is the accepted norm.

For selection of respondents, referral sampling is the accepted method. As the name implies, this involves obtaining references of people and then snowballing from the root referral – of a fixed number of target group respondents, and again, an equal number from the subsequent referrals, thus building up the sample.

To minimize bias in this method, various checks and procedures have been evolved; e.g. the initial contact in the snowballing technique is not interviewed and no more than two contacts from the ‘seed contact’ to be interviewed, etc.

Given the diversity in nationality groups, setting quotas by nationality is critical and then, quotas are usually set on other demographic parameters.

In the Levant and North Africa...

When compared with the GCC countries, these regions are economically less affluent and the proportion of expatriates are also much lower. These are relatively freer societies – more liberal and boast of a rich historical and cultural heritage.

The societies are better developed but still authoritarian which translates into:

• obtaining prior approvals before launching research surveys; and
• avoiding political sensitive issues, as part of any survey.

Furthermore, in contrast to the GCC countries, better universe information is available, and door-to-door sampling is indeed feasible.

All these make researching these markets an interesting experience, to say the least!