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Will today be business as usual? Or would you like to finally reach your target market?
NY Times: Closing on a Dream
Posted by:admin | Posted on: May 4th, 2009 | 0 Comments
By JAMES ANGELOS
IN 2003, a Bangladeshi Muslim named Zia Hashem took out a loan to buy a condominium apartment in Parkchester, in the Bronx. During the two years he lived there with his wife and young son, he was perpetually uneasy about having borrowed the money.
There was definitely a guilt, Mr. Hashem, a 33-year-old systems engineer, said one recent evening after the sunset prayers at Baitul Islam Masjid, a small mosque in University Heights.
Many Muslims believe that paying or receiving interest violates Shariah, or Islamic law. Thus, for Muslims, buying a home in the United States often means violating religious principles.
The banking system we have here, with the interest, thats something I dont believe, said Mr. Hashem, who that night prayed on the mosques green carpet wearing a blue Hawaiian shirt covered with images of palm trees.
Mr. Hashem is now in the market for another house, but this time he plans to use what is called a Shariah-compliant system of home financing, an increasingly popular approach that uses various financing methods to sidestep practices Muslims object to.
As the nations Muslim population has grown, so has the number of banks and finance companies offering Shariah-compliant home financing options. The practice is less common in New York, due in part to the high cost of housing and the often hefty down payments required. Nevertheless, especially in the boroughs beyond Manhattan, Muslims are increasingly using faith-based financing options to buy houses.
A company called Guidance Residential began to offer these options in New York in 2003 and has served 200 customers in the city. Despite the sluggish housing market, the number of new clients in New York continues to grow, according to Hussam Qutub, a company spokesman.
Advertisements for various Shariah-compliant financing offers can be found in magazines distributed in the citys mosques. One recent ad, touting a cash-out mortgage conversion, featured the image of a smiling couple in a lush green garden, the wife wearing a maroon headscarf.
It was our dream to perform hajj for our anniversary, reads the ad. That dream came true, says the couple, without their having to resort to an interest-based loan to finance their pilgrimage to Mecca, in Saudi Arabia.
Muslims are exactly like other Americans, Mr. Mamun said. We have that American dream of owning our own house and practicing our beliefs.
Source:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/03/nyregion/thecity/03rmort.html
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NY Times: A Hometown Bank Heeds a Call to Serve Its Islamic Clients
Posted by:admin | Posted on: March 7th, 2009 | 0 Comments
By SAMUEL G. FREEDMAN
ANN ARBOR, MICH.
Until a stranger without an appointment showed up one day in late 2001, Stephen L. Ranzini was feeling rather pleased with himself. University Bank here, which he led as president, had just won a national award for community service. The honor attested to Mr. Ranzinis success in working with local black ministers and a nonprofit agency to increase home-ownership in African-American neighborhoods.
Then, disturbing the aura of satisfaction, a well-dressed man arrived and insisted on seeing the president. If your bank is so outstanding for community service, the visitor said, as Mr. Ranzini recently recalled, how come you are not servicing my community?
Mr. Ranzini started to explain that University Bank already had plenty of Muslim customers, hardly a surprise in a college town in the area of southeast Michigan with the largest concentration of Arab-Americans in the United States.
Over the next 10 minutes, Mr. Ranzini, a Roman Catholic executive who had grown up in the vanilla suburbs of New Jersey, started an education that would ultimately transform an otherwise conventional hometown bank into a national leader in the growing specialty of Islamic finance. This year, the bank won an award from the American Bankers Association largely for its service to Muslim clients.
University Bank now has an entire subsidiary devoted to financial products that comply with Muslim religious law, or Shariah. It has done nearly $80 million in Islamically approvable mortgage-alternative financing for residential and commercial real estate in 15 states.
This past week, while the stock market plunged to its lowest point in a dozen years and close-to-home General Motors teetered near bankruptcy, University Bank recorded one of its best periods ever. It completed 11 home sales, more than twice the weekly average, to observant Muslim customers, and pushed four more closings into next week.
I never thought Id be involved in Islamic banking because Id never even heard of it, Mr. Ranzini, 43, said in an interview. And its been a stretch to learn it, succeed at it and make it work. But you feel best about the things that were hardest to do.
To distill and simplify some complicated theological and financial concepts, the basis of Islamic finance is Shariahs forbidding of riba, which can be variously translated as usury or interest. Mortgage alternatives, which are the most popular financial product for Islamic consumers in the United States, essentially add what would have been the monthly interest into the purchase price of a home.
In one variation, the bank actually buys the house at a qualified customers direction, and then sells it to that customer through monthly installments modeled on the payments of a 30-year mortgage. In two other common methods, the customer either acquires the home from the bank on a lease-to-own arrangement or purchases the home in partnership with the bank and gradually buys out the banks share.
University Banks boomlet forms only part of a national trend. Institutions like Devon Bank in Chicago and Guidance Residential in Reston, Va., also offer mortgage alternatives. The Amana Funds, based in Bellingham, Wash., has several mutual funds operating on Islamic principles.
For the past decade, Dow Jones has computed a stock index for Shariah-compliant companies. The law schools at Harvard, Fordham and the University of California, Berkeley, have held academic conferences on Islamic finance.
Its part of this religious revival, this return to roots, you see taking place not only in Islam but in many faiths, said Isam Salah, an expert in Islamic financing at the international law firm King & Spalding. And as people began to see the feasibility of Islamic financing, you had smart bankers saying: There are seven million Muslims in the U.S. Theres a niche market no one is serving, and I can do it.
For customers like Abdul El-Sayed, though, the bank was literally a godsend.
A medical student and Rhodes scholar, Mr. El-Sayed bought a $123,000 condominium in Ann Arbor with a mortgage-alternative arrangement. A generation earlier, Mr. El-Sayeds father had had no choice under Shariah but to save up until he could buy a home with cash.
Ultimately, the question is, Mr. El-Sayed, 24, said in an interview, when I die and I stand before God and go through everything I did in my life, I dont want to say I did it the easy way instead of the Shariah-compliant way. Not because of fear but because of obligation.
The sense of religious and communal obligation has its fiduciary advantages to Mr. Ranzini. Besides carefully vetting prospective home-buyers, and besides having a well-educated, professional clientele among American Muslims, he has customers for whom default would be almost sinful. Indeed, there have been only a handful of failures among University Banks observant Muslim clients.
In my heart, Im doing this because its the command of my creator, said Fariz Huzair, 51, who recently bought a home for his family in Canton, Mich. You have a standard you are supposed to live up to.
Source:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/07/us/07religion.html
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Desedo.com: American-Muslim Identity: Advertising, Mass Media + New Media
Posted by:admin | Posted on: October 29th, 2008 | 0 Comments
by Michael Hastings-Black
It’s a $170 Billion Market, Why Aren’t You Targeting It?
Advertising in the U.S. has often influenced the pop-culture identities of religious and ethnic minorities. To be targeted by marketers serves as an invitation to join in the national narrative of capitalism. To shop is to be an American.
In the coming years, the U.S. market will likely begin to recognize and court the $170 billion purchasing power of American Muslims. To date, pop-culture representations of Islam are either cloaked in evil or infused with pathos. But as Hallmark, Wal-Mart and 20th Century Fox begin creating content engaging this demographic, it will slowly help to show that American Muslims are, as Farid Senzai said, “as boring as the rest of us.”
American brands do such things within primarily Islamic countries — Burger King in the United Arab Emirates, Hewlett-Packard in Bangladesh, Oreos in Indonesia, etc. But to date, no Muslim holidays are seized as sales opportunities in the U.S., except perhaps in Dearborn, Mich., the city with the highest concentration of Muslims and Middle Eastern folks in America. Wal-Mart has opened a store in Dearborn designed for this demo.
Entrepreneur: The Muslim Market: How can you reach out to this fast-growing group of consumers?
Posted by:admin | Posted on: April 2nd, 2008 | 0 Comments
By Gwen Moran
With buying power that’s roughly equal to the state of Indiana, the growing U.S. Muslim population–estimated at between 6 million and 8 million people–is an attractive segment for marketers. Reaching them requires an understanding of their culture, beliefs and preferences, says Ann Mack, director of trendspotting for advertising agency JWT, which released “Marketing to Muslims,” a study of Muslim-American consumer habits, last year.
“Muslims are more interested than most Americans in seeing advertising that acknowledges them,” says Mack. She says Muslim-Americans are a neglected market with huge potential for brands that are willing to connect with them. There are a few things to keep in mind, though.
Sex doesn’t sell
Like many religious Americans, Muslims are especially turned off by sexual suggestiveness or immodesty, says Mack. Use images that aren’t sexually provocative.
Offer the right stuff
Mack says three main areas of consumption are affected by Muslim religious beliefs: food (including abstaining from pork and pork products), household goods and cosmetics (these must be made in accordance with Islamic law) and clothing (modest styles, especially for women, are a must). Muslims also require tailored financial services, as Islamic law prohibits paying or receiving interest.
Source:
http://www.entrepreneur.com/magazine/entrepreneur/2008/april/191578.html
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Atkearney: Addressing the Muslim Market: Can You Afford Not To?
Posted by:admin | Posted on: January 25th, 2008 | 0 Comments
Throughout the world, Muslims are becoming increasingly active as investors and manufacturers, bankers and traders, competitors and suppliers, and becoming real partners in a global economic system. Muslims comprise one of the fastest growing consumer markets in the world and, hence, represent a major growth opportunity for businesses around the world.
Read the Full Report (PDF):
http://www.atkearney.com/shared_res/pdf/AddressingMuslimMarket_S.pdf
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The Economist: Marketing food and fashion to Muslims
Posted by:admin | Posted on: August 2nd, 2007 | 0 Comments
From The Economist print edition
MARKETERS and self-proclaimed trendspotters in the Western world love slicing and segmenting consumers into an ever larger number of categories. They created the teenager, the yuppie, the baby boomer, the singleton and the metrosexual. For all of them they invented needs that could, inevitably, be met by whatever product they happened to be promoting. Yet to this day they tend to tiptoe around Muslims as a distinct market segment. Although they have settled into a fairly comfortable relationship with Jews and Christians whose cultures they feel they know and understand, the cultural divide with the Muslim world seems to be too daunting.
But a new study by JWT, an advertising agency, points out that the 6m or so Muslims in America are, on average, richer and better educated than the general population. Two-thirds of Muslim households make more than $50,000 a year and a quarter earn over $100,000; the national average is $42,000. Two-thirds of American Muslims have a college degree, compared with less than half of the general population. Muslim families also tend to have more children. So the perception that marketing specifically to Muslims is not worthwhile would appear to be wrong.
Source:
http://www.economist.com/business/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9587818
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NY Times: Rewriting the Ad Rules for Muslim-Americans
Posted by:admin | Posted on: April 28th, 2007 | 0 Comments
By LOUISE STORY
For years, few advertisers in the United States have dared to reach out to Muslims.
Either they did not see much potential for sales or they feared a political backlash. And there were practical reasons: American Muslims come from so many ethnic backgrounds that their only common ground is their religion, a subject most marketers avoid.
That is beginning to change. Consumer companies and advertising executives are focusing on ways to use the cultural aspects of the Muslim religion to help sell their products.
Grocers and consumer product companies are considering ways to adapt their goods to Muslim rules, which forbid among other things, gelatin and pig fat, which is often used in cosmetics and cleaning products. Retailers are looking into providing more conservative skirts, even during the summer months, and mainstream advertisers are planning to place some commercials on the satellite channels that Muslims often watch.
Marketing to Muslims carries some risks. But advertising executives, used to dividing American consumers into every sort of category, say that ignoring this group estimated to be about five million to eight million people, and growing fast would be like missing the Hispanic market in the 1990s.
I think Muslims have had to draw into themselves, said Marian Salzman, executive vice president and chief marketing officer of JWT, a large advertising agency in the WPP Group that plans to encourage clients like Johnson & Johnson and Unilever to market to American Muslims. It puts an increased burden on a marketer post-9/11 to say, Look, we understand.
Companies in the Detroit area, where there is a dense population of Muslims, are leading the change. A McDonalds there serves halal Chicken McNuggets; Walgreens has Arabic signs in its aisles. And now, Ikea, which recently opened a store in the suburb of Canton, Mich., that has had trouble attracting as many Muslim customers as it had hoped, has been touring local homes and talking to Muslims to figure out their needs.
The store there plans to sell decorations for Ramadan next fall and is adding halal meat to its restaurant menu, or meat that is prepared according to Islamic law. Catalogs in Arabic are being planned, and female Muslim employees are expected to be given an Ikea-branded hijab, to wear over their head if they wish.
Marketing to Muslims is, of course, mostly intended to increase sales, but advertising has also long been a mirror of changes in society.
Ms. Salzman pointed to ads in the 1960s that featured Jewish products like Levys rye bread, which, she said, helped bring that group more into mainstream advertising. She also noted that ads from companies like McDonalds in the early 1990s portrayed busy mothers who admitted that they did not cook every night like their mothers did.
Marketers have actually helped us to rewrite the rules about what were comfortable with, she said.
Source:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/28/business/28muslim.html
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JWT: Study Reveals One of America’s Biggest Hidden Niche Markets
Posted by:admin | Posted on: April 27th, 2007 | 0 Comments
Muslims in America Have More Than $170 Billion in Buying Power Brands and Word-of-Mouth Shape Muslims Purchasing Decisions
NEW YORK, April 30, 2007 American Muslims are more likely than other Americans to be swayed by brands when making purchasing decisions, even though virtually no major brands currently target Muslims. With above-average levels of education and a combined buying power estimated at more than $170 billion, Muslims represent a major untapped niche market, according to a new study commissioned by JWT.
Muslim-Americans are as consumer minded as other Americans, and our study clearly shows that Muslims are a niche market to be approached with classic marketing disciplines, says Marian Salzman, executive vice president and chief marketing officer at JWT Worldwide. In fact, it would be more true to say that Muslim-Americans represent a number of niche markets distinguished by many factors, including ethnicity, culture and whether they are immigrants.
JWT, the largest advertising agency in the U.S. and the fourth-largest in the world, commissioned this wide-ranging study on Americas estimated 6 to 8 million Muslims; it includes in-depth interviews with noted Muslim-Americans, ethnographies of ordinary Muslims and a survey of 350 Muslims that used face-to-face interviews. An adapted version of the survey was also fielded online to more than 450 Americans representing the general population.
Read the Report (PDF Format):
http://www.jwt.com/pdf/news/muslimsfocused300407.pdf
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