Daily deal industry is quite young in the Arab world. Consumers are getting accustomed to this new form of electronic commerce. The biggest advantage attracting them towards the Groupon’s clones is perceptibly the steep discounts daily deals carry with them. They know now that they do not need to relinquish their desires to eat, play, enjoy, and own fabulous things owing to prohibitive prices. On the flip side, consumers with relatively strong buying power have a wide spending base to relish at the long spell of shopping therapy because of the group buying.
Dubai, the jewel of the Middle East and the heart of UAE, is seeing the daily deal entrepreneurs jumpstarting their ventures by offering Dubai deals and later expanding coverage to the other emirates.
Cobone, the fastest growing deal a day site in the UAE, launched its web-based sales with a hope that dwellers would welcome the social commerce. The website having financial backup from Jabbar internet group rightly expected so since it has sold 387,000 coupons since July 2010. Was that a one way process? Obviously not. The company claimed to have saved consumers AED80 million.
According to the Kongregator, Cobone leads the market with 50 per cent share followed by none other than Groupon (32 per cent), LivingSocial’s Gonabit seven per cent, NailTheDeal 2.2 per cent, Dealgobbler 0.33 per cent, Makhsoom 0.25 per cent, and MooSavings 0.24 per cent.
The researcher may have missed the newfangled entrants. Even then, it shows a general trend.
Group buying sites offer daily deals from tour and travel to hotel, from food and beverage to household goods, from leisure to event tickets, and from spa to personal health care services. Just as the people’s interest is growing, so categories are also ramping up.
Market players are excited over the cheerful public response to couponing phenomenon. “With the steady growth of e-commerce in the UAE, we believe there is a tremendous potential for our business model to succeed,” said Serhan Erol, managing director JOYoffer in a press release.
Why do daily deal sites beeline to Dubai? A survey by Yahoo Maktoob Research that polled 2900 people from various Arab nations found that consumers prefer Dubai over London, Paris, Istanbul and Beijing for shopping.
Dubai receives millions of foreigners every year from different parts of the world. European tourists flock to the city to enjoy winter vacations in pristine nearby desert, inter-emirates visitors spend holidays in fun-filled atmosphere, and foreign workers come to work in multinational and local companies. Foreign visitors are expected to surpass eight million by the end of 2011, reported Khaleej Times.
It should also be noted that online shopping in UAE is expected to go through an average growth rate of 6.5 per cent over next five years, according the Euromonitor International.
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