SMEs in the UAE’s Creative Industries: Female Employees and Lax Marketing Efforts

Abstract

Small and medium-sized companies (SMEs) are often at the forefront of technological innovations, and the target of M&As for this reason. Most businesses are SMEs, as there are comparatively fewer large corporations. The marketing efforts at SMEs in creative industries differ from those of other firms, with efforts often involving customers in the process more frequently than in other types of businesses. In the United Arab Emirates (UAE), there is a thriving creative business community, especially in Dubai, the country's largest city. A survey of three SMEs in creative industries in Dubai provides a glimpse of the business culture, struggles, and opportunities encountered by creative workers. These firms do not place much importance on marketing, which is surprising. This may be related to women's' low representation in these companies' workforces, which are low even by UAE standards, though not as low as may commonly be believed.Keywords: brand awareness, marketing strategy, small to medium-sized enterprises, United Arab Emirates IntroductionSmall and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) play an important role in creative industries across the globe. Their attention on effective marketing strategies can often mean the difference between surviving, scaling up, or going under (like most businesses). Unlike their larger competitors, SMEs struggle with much greater financial resource limitations as they seek to spread their innovative products and ideas to the public. In the United Arab Emirates (UAE), SMES in creative industries face these same challenges, but rather than finding a way to pay for marketing, they seem to show little interest in pursuing any such efforts. Interestingly, women are very under-represented in these types of SMEs in the UAE, which may play a role in the lack of attention given to marketing. In Western countries, marketing is typically a significant (and majority-female) division of business entities, even among SMEs with fewer resources. Making allowances for the UAE's different culture, in which news about new products spreads through word-of-mouth more often than in countries such as the US, it seems that these SMEs are missing sales opportunities they might otherwise capture.Marketing offers organizations an opportunity to increase their sales by promoting brand awareness, offering special discounts, and generally making the company more visible in the public eye. SMEs in the UAE appear to be deficient in implementing adequate marketing strategies. This study will describe SMEs and their marketing efforts in general, and then focus on SMEs in the creative industries in the UAE and the efforts, if any, they put into marketing. Additionally, this study examines the number of women working in these firms as a potential cause of their disinterest in marketing. Primarily, this study examines quantitative evidence to determine if there is a correlation suggesting a link between inadequate marketing efforts among creative businesses in the UAE and the limited number of women they employ. ...