Arab Dawn by Bessma Momani

Author:Bessma Momani
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4426-2428-3
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Published: 2015-11-11T05:00:00+00:00

Mecca Mall

Many Arab youth have an uncanny way of mixing both Eastern and Western identities in their lives. They often seamlessly traverse both worlds, and do so in their day-to-day lives. For example, although many young Arab women choose to wear a hijab, they are likely to do so in conjunction with fashionable trends found in Western-style retail stores. I asked a perceptive friend in Amman what was going on with young Arab women today. I was surprised to learn that many young women throughout the region, from Rabat to Cairo to Amman to Dubai, were wearing a hijab with tight blue jeans and trendy tops – cues taken from stylish Western magazines. According to my friend, young Arab women today are “Mecca above the neck, and Mecca Mall below the neck” – certainly not the image I had of the conservative wearers of the hijab. Mecca Mall is a trendy shopping place in Amman that houses branches of Western retail stores. The visibility of such stores increasingly erodes the contradiction between wearing a hijab as well as trendy clothes from popular Western outlets such as Zara, H & M, Mango, and DKNY, which launched an Islamic Ramadan collection for the summer and fall 2014. Geared towards urban women, the collection includes colourful trench coats paired with trousers, khakis, and stylish hijabs.

This apparent incongruity is becoming more and more normal in the Arab world, and is emblematic of the balance between Eastern and Western identities that young people increasingly exhibit and advertising specialists agree are shaping their purchasing behaviour. Market researchers looking at consumers in five Arab countries have found that Arabs are unique, global consumers who share values such as an emphasis on the importance of family, an attachment to traditions that are adaptive to modernity, a high regard for education, a desire for spaces for self-expression, and an attraction to Western products.8 Beyond these commonalities, the researchers segmented Arabs into four broad consumer types: religious conservatives, primarily older men, who are “anti-media and information-averse”; societal conformists, mostly men from lower socio-economic groups, particularly in rural areas; New Age Muslims, who are upper or middle class, urbanite, and mainly female, who like modern trends and are religious; and liberals, who are urban, young, and affluent.9 As Table 4.1 indicates, not all five countries in the survey have the same mix of consumer types. Religious conservatives are primarily of an older demographic group and will have less purchasing power over time, whereas demographic trends predict that both New Age Muslims and liberals will have the highest-growing share of consumer power in the region. The lesson for marketing specialists and those looking for future trends in identities and societal values is that, with the rapid pace of urbanization, the region likely will be dominated by members of the latter categories.

Table 4.1: Consumer Types in Five Arab Countries

Consumer Type Algeria Egypt Jordan Saudi Arabia UAE

(percentage of those surveyed)

Religious conservatives 40 52 18 20 46

Societal conformists 40 22 36 19 13

New Age Muslims

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