8 May 2026
Uzbekistan can offer the world not a copy of Western digital models but its own school of marketing for fast-growing, multilingual, and culturally complex markets — but this requires legal and organizational consolidation of knowledge.
Khairullo Kutliyev — Editor of "Management" Magazine.
The marketing and advertising system in Uzbekistan is still in its formative stage: laws "On Advertising," "On Electronic Commerce," and "On Competition" already exist, along with regulations governing consumer protection. However, the professional market infrastructure remains less developed than the legal framework.
There is a lack of reliable industry statistics by segment, insufficient universally accepted standards for evaluating the effectiveness of marketing and advertising campaigns, few public studies, and both agency self-regulation and the talent development system remain underdeveloped.
Among the most visible challenges is the obvious gap between creative work and analytics. Additionally, the weak history and culture of marketing research takes its toll, as does the shortage of specialists in strategy, data, branding, and PR measurement; non-transparent pricing; the conflation of SMM, advertising, PR, and sales into a single service; the low verifiability of advertising claims; and insufficient consumer protection from manipulative advertising.
The rules have become more transparent than they were before 2022, but not yet fully so. The main advantage here is the existence of updated legislation and the gradual digitization of certain government services. For example, in 2024 the Cabinet of Ministers introduced a clear procedure for issuing approvals for pharmaceutical and dietary supplement advertising through public service centers or the EPIGУ portal.
On the other hand, businesses often lack clear explanations, real enforcement case studies, regular consultations, and a unified platform for discussing new modern formats: influencer and native advertising, AI-generated content, marketplace operations, personal data, and targeting.
Social responsibility is felt, but remains fragmented and situational. A more mature model should be built on honest advertising, the prevention of manipulation targeting children and vulnerable groups, responsible advertising of pharmaceuticals, financial services, education, and dietary supplements, the promotion of eco-friendly products, transparent ad labeling by influencers, and a deep respect for language, culture, and the consumer.
A comparatively young audience, a rapid pace of digitization, the central role of social media, multilingualism, an extraordinarily rich artisan and tourism heritage, and a booming e-commerce market — all of this constitutes a powerful foundation on which to build scientific, methodological, and practical development of entirely new directions in marketing research.
The country is capable of independently adopting new methodologies, but only with the essential condition of legal and organizational consolidation of knowledge. We need local methodologies for measuring brand strength, reputation, trust, loyalty, and the effectiveness of PR and SMM; we need national studies of consumer behavior; and we need to train specialists in data-driven marketing, AI advertising, brand strategy, and communication analytics. Methodologies should be developed not by the government alone, but collaboratively — by universities, agencies, businesses, and professional associations.
Currently, market discussions too often boil down to SMM, reach, targeting, design, and sales — which is clearly no longer sufficient. We need to move to a larger scale and engage in wider debate about advertising ethics, the quality of marketing research, influencer regulation, influencer accountability, consumer protection, PR effectiveness measurement, tender transparency, talent development, the role of the Uzbek language in advertising, the use of AI, and the formation of a national school of branding.
Uzbekistan can offer the world not merely a copy of Western digital models, but its own school of marketing for fast-growing, multilingual, and culturally complex markets.