During the past few years a growing trend emerged among people who live in Dubai. More and more residents of the city become addicted to shopping. But why is that so? It is true that the UAE is currently one of the most financially stable countries in the world. In addition, people in the Middle East receive some of the highest salaries in the world. However, the shopping addiction problem in Dubai is not triggered only by the excess of money. There are many other factors which lure more and more people to overspending for things they don’t really need or they don’t even want.
Brand Abundance
Dubai is known as a shopping Mecca. The city is full of shopping malls where famous brands from around the world have multiple stores. Almost every major fashion brand has a store or boutique in Dubai. Moreover, some of the world’s best known companies chose the city to open their largest stores targeting the Middle Eastern rich consumers. Such is the case with Bloomingdale’s, Prada and Harvey Nichols. As a result, Dubai residents are overexposed to labels, brands and novelties.
Researches show that 31% of the people who live in the region prefer to buy designer items. In addition, a staggering 59% of the Dubai residents consider labels to be a clear sign of a person’s social status. By the way, this is a very wrong perception that could be a subject of more detailed research. What you wear does not make who you are!
Geographical Location
The geographical location of the city also favours excessive shopping. Dubai has a hot and humid climate. For that reason, people are driven to the big air-conditioned shopping malls. There, they are overexposed to the advertisement and presence of the major brands and that makes them shop more. Brands here are purely profit-oriented, and do not run environmental campaigns in the park or on the beach, but in the mall.
Also, as it was already mentioned, Dubai is a shopping hub due to the city’s geographical location. People from China, Saudi Arabia and Europe come here on a holiday or simply on a shopping spree across the malls. It seems that this tendency for shopping is reflecting on Dubai residents as well. Whenever you go out, and that means most of the time to the shopping mall, you see radiant tourists carrying a multitude of glossy shopping bags.
Fashion in the Air
A number of power events like Dubai World Cup horse racing or the Oil Barron’s Ball, and never-ending product launches require attendants to dress to the occasions where often they are judged on their outfits by the rest of the crowd. As a result, people have become highly fashion conscious and this is another reason why are Dubai residents addicted to shopping.
Unlimited Advertisement
Advertising during the past few years become oppressive, intruding and time-consuming for most of the people who live in Dubai. Since the moment you wake up and turn the radio on, you get bombarded with offers and promotions. When you drive around Dubai, you see advertisement everywhere and in all forms, from billboards to TV screens. If you take the public transport, you may see even more advertisement.
Nowadays, the movies in the Reel Cinema start 25 minutes later, because the cinema makes huge chunk of profit by showing its public a rich variety of advertisements. This is understandable, but up to some extent! Five ads at the time are quite enough for most of the people, but in Dubai you get to see 35 or more various advertisements before the film starts.
The worse advertisement seller is the TV network. A TV show that is supposed to last 35 minutes, for example, consists of approximately 21 minutes advertisement and 14 minutes content. In addition, the TV ads are literary stuffed by 20 or even 25 in blocks of approximately five minutes each. For example, during “The Entrepreneur” TV show of 35 minutes, you can watch 4 or 5 times the same advertisement for Coca-Cola. This is no longer even an effective advertisement, because it doesn’t inspire you to drink Coca-Cola, but boars you. In many countries around the world, TV advertisement is regulated by law. Industry experts say that in the United Kingdom, for every one hour of TV program viewers should see 9 minutes of advertisement. In the United States, the norm is stretched to 17 minutes of ads for each hour of show or film.
Excessive advertisement prompts consumerism and overspending, which is unhealthy habit for young generations.
However, Dubai is no exception to the world. The global shopaholic trend is also impressive. But unlike in other countries, the causes for shopping addiction in Dubai are quite obvious.
I would like to share with you brothers and sisters about marketing strategies of Malls, SuperMarket-Groceries in Dubai and buying habits of people who is attracted by the advertisements and lose their valuable money.
The advertisement leaflets and beautiful brouchers are distributed periodically. Usually available in the reception of each building in communities. There will be dashing brouchers from malls, supermarkets-groceries, depicted with pictures of items.(mostly the items would be soon expiring, inferior qualities, or going to be outdated electronics, or older models) Price strategies from 0.99 dirham (not 1 dirham), 250 dhs old price – 169 dhs new price and other well known tricks.
Once we get brouchers we browse(repeatedly minimum 4 or 5 times) for offers and found one or two items which are not really necessary for us but we make up our mind to so many usage options (like going vacation in the coming month or lets use it in this or that way, the offer would be no more, so lets grab it soon) and make decision to go and purchase. Then once we go there the offer will be out of stock, or the offer is mislead or if it is the right offer as we saw in adv. then we not only purchase the offer items, we go for other items also. So we spend more money on unnecessary items. And we lose our money.
Actually the offers are useful when we have been thinking about purhasing the item sometimes before which is really necessary. When the offer matches our real necessity then its useful offer. Otherwise its killer offer which make us to lose our money in unnecessary purchases.
Lets not trap in the advertisement tricks of merchandisers of malls and super markets – groceries.
Another thing is that we are cheated by the price strategiess like 9 dirhams(instead of 10 dhs), 19.90 dirhams(intead of 20 dhs. 99 dirhams instead of (100 dhs), 799 dhs instead f 800 dhs. These are all psycological manipulation of our mind to think the single digit or the first digit number in the price, i.e 799 is actually 800 dhs, but its illusioned like 700 dhs. People are convincing themselves to jump in to purchase the items for 700 dhs not realizing its actually 800 dhs.
The real ethics of business is not to manipulate the people’s mind to purchase unnecessary items by tricky advertisements, but the businesses here has to offer real value for necessities of the consumers. The businesses have competitions have to compete in providing great value for money to the consumers, not to manipulate them through sales and marketing strategies. People will get awareness of this tricks and they will stop go to the particular malls or supermarkets.
Lets wish for genuine necessary things to buy and lets not lose our money by the manipulative marketing and sales and offers(which are 99% cheating).
Thank you very much for the comment. All written is absolutely true and greatly complements our article.
Great article, but the analysis is not deep enough.
People shop because they want and choose to, not because advertising and branding convinces them to – it would be great if the author could work to deepen our understanding of what constitutes ‘shopping addiction’ (since Khaleejis have been “addicted to shopping” and fashion conscious for many decades). It’s also important to address the role of peer-to-peer communication plays in how purchasing decisions are made. Our community influences us more than a piece of advertising ever could.
# Ahmed: Thanks for the comments you highlighted. My question is: in case you will buy a small application from one of the famous mobile ditributers in the world, what is the most common price you find? $0.99. correct me if wrong. if you go back to ten years only and i mean it ten years not further, you will never find such cheat and ways to cheat shoppers. Why is that? i will keep it to you.
P.S: Dubai is the shopping Mecca? Guys why do you keep involving religion?!!