Page 136 - MYM 2016

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Marketing for arabian vision 2030
WbY abdulhai MohaMMed Megdad
ith the huge changes in Saudi Arabia in the past few years, and looking to international reports such as McKinsey’s December 2015 article,
“Moving Saudi Arabia’s economy beyond oil,” it is clear that the Saudi economy needs to move beyond oil and empower non-oil sectors in its economy. Taking this and changes in Saudi demographic structure into consideration, there will be many challenges in the market in the coming years to reducing government spending and build a strong private sector. e private sector has to build new marketing strategies that focus on the consumer and open new marketing opportunities away
from government spending and the oil sector. As we know, marketing is the business function that links business with people’s needs and wants. is the core of Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030: to link the country’s economy with strong HR that re ects the needs and wants of the Saudi nation .
Taking this into consideration, the private sector will play an important role in implementing Saudi Vision 2030 and therefore, marketing will play a strong leading role in this context. For years, in Saudi Arabia marketing has been considered
a supporting function, and the role of marketing
in many organizations is limited to PR and mass communication. Additionally, marketing and sales functions overlap without giving exact de nitions to the role of each function. With these new market trends, the Saudi private sector and government institutions will have to spend heavily on build-
ing strong marketing functions – understanding market trends and bringing momentum to the Saudi economy to match international changes.
In order to implement Saudi Vision 2030, marketing has to take the lead in the following functions in Saudi economy:
136 | MINd YOUr MarkETING OCTOBEr 2016
1. Understanding market trends and need
for market research: Market research-based data is the main driver for any marketing strategy. e unavailability of adequate and accurate market data is one of the main obstacles in the Saudi market, which forces marketers to make decisions with- out a proper understanding of the current market and industry. In order to implement Vision 2030 and be able to understand market trades, the gov- ernment and private sector need to invest heavily in marketing research in order to understand the demographic changes in the Saudi market and the future impact of these changes. Saudi Arabia is one of the heaviest user nations for social media, and this in and of itself brings a lot of opportunity for new marketing and communications tools.
2. New marketing strategies: e current changes toward a more non-oil economy requires new marketing strategies from both the govern- ment and the private sector. High government spending in the past led to the need to create competitive marketing strategies focusing on consumers, such as services, quality of products, branding, and so forth. Now the marketing strategy should take into consideration the lesser purchasing power from the consumer side and the increase in competition. is requires looking into more inno- vative marketing strategies that capitalize on higher customer service and quality with a deeper under- standing of consumer needs. With a view towards understand Saudi consumers and their buying behavior, this requires leveraging new marketing trends like building customer experience models for the Saudi market and “neuro marketing”. We will not be able achieve Vision 2030 without trans- forming from traditional marketing approaches to the latest changes.
3. Strong Saudi marketing HR: It is no secret that there is a lack of strong Saudi marketers who understand the market and the customers. In