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By reading and understanding the case study, Students will be able to link the importance of healthy life style and the physical exercise to the fitness industry in the UAE society, to reduce the growing percentage of obesity and related diseases; identify the main challenges of Tone Fitness Ladies’ Studio (Tone); explore the market segmentation of fitness centers in UAE based on a benefits segmentation of fitness industry; identify the demographic segmentation of Tone Fitness studio and the effects of considering gender and age; and develop individual perspectives of how Tone Fitness ladies’ studio may overcome the challenges to compete in the UAE fitness market.

Three sisters from the United Arab Emirates (Hind, Mariam and Amna Mohamed Omer) have established a fitness studio for women in Al Maqta’a (formerly known as Bain al Jasrain) on the eastern side of Abu Dhabi. Each of them shared a passion for sport, which led them to realize their business idea of setting up a fitness studio specifically for women. An understanding of Emirati culture and the needs of women in their society inspired them to think of a special place where women could find relief from work and life demands while also exercising pursuant of a healthy lifestyle. They launched Tone Ladies’ Fitness Studio (Tone) in September 2014, the first fitness studio for women in Al Maqta’a. The studio is in the same building as a cooperative hypermarket – a very good location because it is visited by many people and has ample parking spaces. Partly due to growing interest among Abu Dhabi residents in fitness and health, new fitness studios opened nearby in 2016, with competitors offering excellent services at reasonable prices. While the demand for fitness and healthy lifestyle pursuits is high in the region, the market has also expanded greatly to meet this demand, with many high-quality options becoming available. As a result of this, businesses such as Tone are facing serious threats to their sustainability. Thus, first, how can the Omer sisters sustain their business and strategize to maintain customers in their market segment? Second, what could they do to improve the market position of Tone in the UAE fitness market?

This case study is suitable for advanced level of diploma certificate in marketing or undergraduate student of marketing field.

Teaching Notes are available for educators only. Please contact your library to gain login details or email support@emeraldinsight.com to request teaching notes.

CSS 8: Marketing

Business management, organization behaviour, organization values, organization culture, customer service.

The case study is suitable for undergraduate courses, particularly business management and related areas.

Ritz Carlton Hotel is one of the luxurious hotels which has expanded internationally in the last 30 years and recently opened its iconic hotel Abu Dhabi Grand Canal. Ritz Carlton offers unique experiences to its customers, which are driven by the embedded “Gold Standards” and values. It has enabled the Ritz Carlton to redefine the hospitability experience and create a competitive advantage. In this case study, the experience of opening this Abu Dhabi hotel is explored with reflections on their “Gold Standards” and the values which have resulted in the Ritz Carlton being benchmarked as a best service company. This made Ritz Carlton to change the way it redefines its business by not being just a hotel, but rather a company which creates memories and experiences for customers.

Discussing the essential factors that contribute to the success of companies in the service industry, with a focus on organization values and living these values in order to achieve competitive advantage.

Teaching notes are available for educators only. Please contact your library to gain login details or email support@emeraldinsight.com to request teaching notes.

This case study focuses on basic business approaches in the decision-making by considering owners and stakeholders’ perspective in highlighting the related issues in customer service, marketing (marketing mix and product mix), strategy, business management and operational management of the sport business in the private sector of Abu Dhabi. At the end of this exercise, students should have a clear consideration of the following: understanding of the equestrian business products and services elements, description of the marketing mix the equestrian business products and services elements, definition of the product mix approach of the marketing mix in equestrian business management, distinguishing needs of product mix alternative decisions approach in equestrian business management in the private sector and labeling of two main customer services based issues and propose a solution using product mix alternatives approaches (expand/eliminate).

Mandara Equestrian Club (MEC) was the culmination of a dream for Faysal Urfali, a Lebanese entrepreneur, and his wife, who lived in (and loved) United Arab Emirates (UAE) for more than 20 years ago. The dream started in 2012, when the Urfali family was vacationing in Spain. They fell in love with the Arabian breed of horses, famous for their wide, flat forehead, soulful eyes, broad muzzle, erect ears, slender neck and flowing, shining mane. Arabian horses are also renowned for their beauty, loyalty, strength and intelligence. Arabian horses are an intrinsic part of Arabian tradition and heritage, always described in Arabic literature as a sign of pride, courage and dignity, in recitation legends of wars. The Urafalis did not have experience with horses during that period, but that did not stop them from starting an equine business in the UAE, specifically in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi. Urfali started MEC in Al Rahba City, a small town in the north site of Abu Dhabi, the Capital of UAE. At its inception in 2013, MEC was open only for private use. In 2014, Urfali decided to open the club to the public due to high demand from visitors and horses’ lovers who were visiting the place to see the horses and request horse rides. MEC carries forward Urfali’s passion for Arabian horses, as it specializes in the care and training of show horses. MEC also offers other equine activities and services for both horse owners and horseback riders. In early 2019, Urfali conducted a meeting to assess MEC’s financial statements and discuss daily business operations. The meeting determined that the club was facing several business challenges to address which, it needs some substantial changes in order to maintain its smooth-functioning. Challenges the club faced involved customer relationship management, customer attraction and skill shortages in the industry. Urfali understood that focusing on MEC as a business operation means raising the marker of success to more than just the fulfillment of a dream. Will MEC be able to keep its focus with such changes?

Undergraduate students majoring in Business Management, Marketing and Strategic Management.

Teaching Notes are available for educators only.

CSS 11: Strategy

This case study focuses on the problems that a company have in segmenting a local market of a gas distribution company and some strategies that they can use for developing a viable market segmentation to target the right segment that will provide a good economics, revenue base customers who also have the mindset to change to a new product. At the end of this exercise, students should have a clear understanding of the following: the essentials concepts of market segmentation, targeting and positioning and how they can be leveraged so that businesses increase their returns; the main elements/steps that drive market segmentation and business positioning; the appropriate methods for market segmentation when targeting local markets for a city gas project; and the challenges companies might face when changing a product.

In 2018, commercial customers began asking Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) Distribution to provide a sustainable solution to ensure a continuous supply of safe gas and avoid the interruptions and hazards associated with the supply of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) to their premises. The request was discussed with the ADNOC marketing, supply and trading (MST) Division to investigate the possibility of growing the natural gas business in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi, thus contributing to the Emirate’s security, economy, environment and community, and ultimately to ADNOC Strategy 2030. Khaled Salmeen, Director of the ADNOC MST Division, believed that industrial customers accounted for higher business volume and profitability. Nevertheless, he advised Shuhab Al Shehhi, the City Gas Project Manager, to study the potential benefits in targeting both residential and commercial customers as part of ADNOC’s responsibility towards community engagement and investments. Al Shehhi had to address several questions: How could the City Gas Project be strategized and positioned so as to target all market segments? What were the potential outcomes? Would targeting all market segments strengthen ADNOC’s brand position?

This case study was written for Marketing and Strategic Management courses in Bachelor of Business Administration programs.

Teaching Notes are available for educators only.

CSS: 8 Marketing

The purpose of this paper is to consider the self-determination theory (SDT) to examine the perceived impact of events on happiness based on event organizers’ opinions. Moreover, it explores whether event organizers in Abu Dhabi consider promoting happiness and well-being as a value of their event and examines how organizers define a successful event.

The research was inspired by Abu Dhabi’s governmental initiative to promote happiness at all stages, with the aim of becoming one of the happiest countries in the world. A qualitative approach was used, and seven event organizers from the Emirate of Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates were interviewed.

Attributes of an event were analyzed, and the results indicated that happiness as a value of events is not an idea that occurs to organizers by recalling values; yet, after reminding them of “happiness,” they all agreed that this value is what they do promote with their events.

Thus, actions must be considered to implement happiness with the potential to become a “first-on-mind” value of events organized in Abu Dhabi (UAE).

Specifically, the authors researched if event organizers consider promoting happiness and well-being as a value of their event, as well as to determine what they considered to be a successful event.

E-government is new to the public administration sector of Abu Dhabi and it is rapidly expanding. The purpose of this paper is to explore the factors that might motivate citizens to adopt the e-government public services provided by the Government of Abu Dhabi Emirate. The insights of the study will help government leaders to plan the delivery of public services effectively.

The study surveyed 638 United Arab Emirates (UAE) citizens living in three main districts of the Abu Dhabi Emirate. The research used an exploratory factor analysis that conforms the validity of the theoretical model to the data collected, confirmatory analysis to extract the latent factors and both multiple regression and structural equation modelling to test the research hypotheses.

The finding revealed that internet trust and performance expectancy was the strongest predictors of intention to use e-government services. Effort expectancy, facilitating conditions and trust had a positive influence on behavioural intention (BI). However, social influence (SI) did not have a significant effect. Gender, age and experience did not affect the relationship between SI and BI. It was also found that BI to use e-government services had a significant influence on the actual use of e-government sites.

When the government gets to know the major factors that affect the adoption of e-government services in Abu Dhabi, it can maximise its returns on ICT infrastructure investments by providing efficient service that could be adopted by the citizens.

The research has theoretical and practical value. Though the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) model has previously been used in organisational settings, the present study uses a modified version in the context of citizens’ acceptance and use of e-government services. The present study thus provides an extension of the UTAUT model that could be suitable for developing countries such as the UAE.

The purpose of this paper is to develop an analytic hierarchy planning-based framework to establish criteria weights and to develop a school performance system commonly called school inspections.

The analytic hierarchy process (AHP) model uses pairwise comparisons and a measurement scale to generate the weights for the criteria. The validity of the approach is confirmed by comparing the outputs of school inspection and the outputs of the model in a sample of schools.

The framework proposed enables school management to address several issues pertaining to its competitive advantage with other schools, the two most important being establishing its performance ranking in the marketplace and identifying the service elements that most require improvement. This study develops a cohesive approach to identify which quality attributes or dimensions require attention.

For school inspections, the data collection and computational problems would increase with the increase in the number of criteria and sub-criteria, as well as the number of schools considered in the selection. Although the range of reported AHP applications is extensive in many disciplines, examples in school quality and inspection remain still rare; as a result, this study could not compare its results with other AHP applications in school inspection or assessment.

The AHP method has the distinct advantage that it decomposes a decision problem into its constituent parts and builds hierarchies of criteria. AHP enables assessors to capture both subjective and objective evaluation measures of school quality. By providing a useful mechanism for assessing the consistency of the evaluation measures and alternatives, the AHP reduces bias in decision making.

The AHP model also provides a more systematic evaluation of a given school’s qualitative performance criteria. The proposed AHP model is attractive to assessors and decision makers because its pairwise comparison procedure enables them to offer a relative (rather than absolute) individual criterion assessment on those qualitative factors.

The AHP model could become a sustainable component of overall school system quality improvement by maturing over time. The AHP annual scores could be used as realistic and measureable gauges for measuring school improvement.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the macro‐factors and contextual variables surrounding the recent introduction of compulsory bilingual schooling in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates, in order to generate informed discussion, and in order for stakeholders to understand the sociocultural, linguistic and pedagogical issues involved.

This paper is an analytic one which examines language‐in‐education in Abu Dhabi through a framework of the operational, situational and outcomes factors involved in bilingual education, as identified by Spolsky et al. and Beardsmore. Insights gained from international empirical research into bilingual education are applied to the Abu Dhabi context, and key questions about the specific model of bilingual education selected are posed for future local research to answer.

The paper concludes that bilingual education is likely to confer linguistic, academic and socioeconomic benefits on future generations of Emirati school leavers. However, the acquisition of biliteracy is likely to be challenging because of the diglossic features of Arabic, as well as the linguistic distance between Arabic and English. Because of the ambiguity of international research findings with regard to the appropriate age to begin second language learning, as well as uncertainty about the merits of simultaneous versus sequential teaching of biliteracy, research must be undertaken in Abu Dhabi schools into the effects of bilingual education under conditions of early Arabic/English immersion.

This paper is timely given the recent announcement of compulsory and universal bilingual state schooling from an early age in Abu Dhabi, and necessary given the dearth of discussion and research on language‐in‐education matters in the Arab world. While the paper is contextualised within the school system of Abu Dhabi, it has resonance for adjacent Gulf States and for the many expatriates from across the Middle East who teach and study in Abu Dhabi's schools.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the profile of health and disease and current status of healthcare in the UAE, in particular Emirate of Abu Dhabi, distilling implications for sustainable economic growth and population well being.

A review of available secondary sources including epidemiological and healthcare data and burden of disease (BoD) literature.

The UAE is facing a major epidemiological transition with a shifting BoD in the form of increasing non‐communicable diseases and a high incidence of injuries. In addition to the seemingly upward prevalence of these key drivers is the fact that the recent advances in UAE health service development have been based on substantial investment in physical infrastructure that is not being matched with the human resources, technology assessment, management and governance that are required to ensure sustainability and quality, in the long‐term.

It is proposed that sustained economic growth can only be ensured through the design, implementation and evaluation of a coordinated health and healthcare research and development strategy that advances international best‐practice in public health, health service and health promotion. Specifically, the strategy should include ongoing surveillance and monitoring of the general health patterns of the population to inform the prevention of non‐communicable disease and injuries. Prevention strategies should encourage inclusive stakeholder inputs and participation.

The paper represents a concise summary of the shifting disease patterns and state of health care in the UAE. Its viewpoint will interest the entire spectrum of healthcare stakeholders: patients, providers and those responsible for planning, assuring the quality of services and financing the health system.