Islamic Branding and Marketing: Creating a Global Islamic Business [by Paul Temporal]

Anybody familiar with Paul Temporal’s other works would also find his latest book Islamic Branding and Marketing: Creating a Global Islamic Business informative. The author’s practitioner background (as a branding consultant), coupled with his academic insight, has equipped him with a binocular to spot the urgency for strategic branding amongst businesses and organisations emerging from or entering Muslim contexts. The main value of the book lies in its discussion of the socio-cultural and economic characteristics of this diverse and large population. Such issues in international/global marketing textbooks are often generally, but unhelpfully briefly, addressed under the subject of ‘adaptation’ or ‘glocalisation’ strategies. Besides, given the fact that relevant books on global/international branding (e.g., Bühler, 2008; Cato, 2010; Gregory & Wiechmann, 2001; Van Gelder, 2003) are generally focused on familiar western brands, Temporal’s book draws marketers’ attention to the myriad brands in non-western contexts. The author’s use of numerous case studies presents to the reader a source of knowledge that is not essentially ‘west-centric’ (see Featherstone, 2006; Jafari, Firat, Suerdem, Askegaard, & Dalli, 2012; Tadajewski, 2010; Tadajewski & Jafari, 2012). This in itself is a valuable contribution to our marketing pedagogical literature which is largely dominated by case studies on repeatedly discussed multinational corporations.