TRENDS: Online Shopping in the GCC

TRENDS: Online Shopping in the GCC

The not-so-e-commerce-friendly GCC has seen a real surge in daily deal website over the past year; but how well have residents taken to e-commerce? This week Pulse Populi's shows that over a third of residents in the UAE and KSA have never shopped online.

August 27, 2011 4:23 by p.deleon

The fact that Kipp’s inbox is inundated with daily emails from a variety of local group-buying websites-even though we never really signed up for them- is indicative of a real change in the local attitudes towards online buying. Even though e-commerce is widely accepted form of business around the world, there has been a genuine resistance, stemming from perhaps a lack of trust towards online buying, here in the GCC. So with the emergence of the likes of Groupon.ae, GoNabbit and Yallabanana.com Kipp was curious if the region’s residents have finally taken their shopping online.

With the help of our good friends at YouGovSiraj, we weren’t too surprised to find out that despite the change in the online shopping landscape, residents in the UAE and KSA still prefer to buy online. And when they do plan on buying stuff, it isn’t the daily deals websites that see all the traffic. In fact classified sites like Dubizzle are the most visited (63% in the UAE) where 42% have also bought something from.

Check out our infographic below to see the rest of the survey results. (Click image for a larger view)