Teaching Notes: Al Ain Dairy
Prepared by Dr. Melodena Stephens Balakrishnan

This case can be used to teach marketing strategy, retail management, branding, customer value, competitive analysis, and even international business strategy. A better understanding of the demographics and geography of UAE is required. The following websites are good places for students to get on overall understanding of the context.
Information on UAE and its Strategic Priorities xan be found at the following websites: http://www.uaeinteract.com/; http://www.ameinfo.com/; http://www.uae-embassy.org/business-trade/trade-export; information on logistics: read Basit, A. (2010), “UAE Top Logistics Hub in the Gulf”, Khaleej Times, dated 16 January, Available:
Q5. Al Ain Diary wants to develop the market for camel milk, What is the customer perceived value for final customers. Identify the target segment. Would you use push or pull retail strategy and why?
Students should be encouraged to research the benefits of camel milk. If you can do a blind taste test in class - this is an ideal time to do so. Students love experimentation (does it taste better with chocolate, as a pudding, with oatmeal, etc). A good source of information on benefits is the local UAE newspaper – Gulf News (http://gulfnews.com/). You can also see articles like the one mentioned BBC (2006 ), “Milking the benefit from camels, BBC News, dated 21 April, Available: http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/TOPICS/EXTTRANSPORT/EXTTLF/0,,contentMDK:21514122~menuPK:3875957~pagePK:210058~piPK:210062~theSitePK:515434,00.html
Customer Perceived Value (CPV) is a customer evaluation of benefits and costs. Benefits are derived from many factors like actual product, image, people associated with the product, the personal value, social value, and service. Costs are not only monetary factors, but the psychic costs, effort and time required for customer to make a purchase or arrive at a purchasing decisions. With environment becoming more important that is an additional factor that can be added to the equation. Students can research this topic and the apply the information they get on camel milk.
This will help them identify geographic markets for