Vijay Mahajan stands on a street corner in Jordan and points out what he has found to be the common heartbeat of marketplaces from Dubai to Des Moines. A young woman and a small child are walking up the street looking at colorful wares displayed in open storefronts.

"No matter where I go in the world, the emotions of a mother for her child are not any different," he explains. "Be she Christian or Hindu or Muslim or Jew, when a festival comes, she wants to be sure there's a gift for everyone. She wants education for her child, some entertainment, and a way to communicate. Sometimes she wants her family to be able to go out to eat."

Mankoushi (similar to pizza) restaurant in Beirut.

Studying market demand is an academic passion that has carried Mahajan, a marketing professor who holds the John P. Harbin Centennial Chair in Business at McCombs, from the rapidly expanding metro areas of China and India to small villages in Africa, exploring how companies, countries and consumers find their balance across the planet. He has written two books, The 86 Percent Solution and Africa Rising, to document his findings. This month he completes a tour of 22 countries gathering insights for his upcoming report on markets in the Arab world.

Mahajan carries with him an enthusiastic appreciation for the unique adaptations companies and consumers make in order to enable markets to function. In a major city in North Africa he wandered through narrow streets of a bazaar wondering how merchants deliver their wares down the tiny lanes, built centuries ago.

"All of a sudden I saw a truck at the end of the road, and a man with a donkey is picking up Coca-Cola for the bazaar," he recalls. "Coca-Cola is in the donkey business! That's a part of their supply chain to reach consumers."

That consumer opportunity is significant. Mahajan points out that the 22 countries in the Arab League, with more than 300 million people, have an economy 75 percent larger than three of the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia and India). "Not all of that is oil," he says. "Many do not have oil, and those that do have diversified their economies. The oil money has to flow somewhere."

He points to the hospitality and tourism industry as a strong marketplace sector.

"Think about it, they get close to four million people within a period of three weeks in Mecca and Medina for Hajj," he says. "Imagine the infrastructure in transportation, hotels, and food, just to cover the basics.

Vijay Mahajan talks with Sarah Beydoun in Beirut. Sarah's Bag is a firm that sells fashion handbags that combine Middle Eastern culture with the newest trends in fashion.

"You get Indians, Indonesians, Americans, French and people from many countries in Africa. These travelers need food, but not everybody eats the same," he says. "They come from all over the world, some rich and famous and some very poor. When they come, they want to buy a souvenir. The poor person wants a $1 souvenir and the rich person wants to buy $30,000 in jewelry. So they've built up a very complex and global environment, and it is a market that actually goes back thousands of years."

Asked what words of advice he would offer to companies seeking to gain a market share in the Arab world, Mahajan smiled broadly. "Listen to the mothers first."