• Average global budget for shopping is between $230 and $300 but in the UAE and Saudi Arabia, it is $400.
• Black Friday and Cyber Monday continue to dominate the holiday shopping season.
• New opportunities for retailers emerge this holiday shopping season.
• Online shopping and spontaneous purchases are on the rise despite a decrease in budgets since last year.

Dubai: The pandemic is leading to a decrease in shopping expenditures globally during Black Friday and Cyber Monday but Saudi Arabia and the UAE boast the highest budgets for this year.

According to a survey conducted by strategy and marketing consulting firm Simon-Kucher & Partners from more than 11,000 consumers across 14 countries, the average budget for shopping during Black Friday and Cyber Monday is between $230 and $300 globally but in the UAE and Saudi Arabia, it is $400.

“With the recent expansion of Amazon in the region, all retailers are engaged in the Black Friday season – both brick-and-mortar and online. It creates an opportunity to inspire customers to explore new shopping occasions. Established preference for traditional offline shopping allows retailers to provide more experiential shopping activations in the stores” Gawel Adamek, a Director in the global Consumer Goods and Retail practice at Simon-Kucher in Dubai, UAE, said. 

This year, he said that retailers will be competing to pull consumers to their online shops through any available online marketing channels and offer them a unique shopping experience online, such as concept corners or exclusive product offers, to boost cross-selling and up-selling opportunities.

Covid-19 has had a significant impact on consumer shopping behaviour for this upcoming holiday shopping season – across all countries, more than 60 per cent of consumers agreed that the pandemic has influenced their shopping behaviour.

Shopping extravaganza

The study revealed that Black Friday and Cyber Monday (Singles Day in China) are continuing to grow in popularity across the world, with Black Friday remaining the most widely-recognised sales event of the holiday season.

However, while the willingness to buy during these holiday shopping events is above 50 per cent across all countries surveyed, this number has decreased year over year.

Among the most noticeable changes are the shift to online shopping for safety reasons, increased emphasis on shopping locally, and a stronger focus on Black Friday to save money during holiday shopping.

Across all countries surveyed,100 per cent of respondents indicate they are familiar with the holiday shopping event– in Saudi Arabia 98 per cent of respondents are familiar with Black Friday. The countries with the lowest levels of recognition are China (87 per cent) and Australia (84 per cent).

While awareness of Cyber Monday remains slightly lower, a majority of respondents in 11 of the 14 countries are aware of the online shopping event – in the UAE and the Saudi Arabia the familiarity with this event is lower, at 60 per cent and 40 per cent of the respondents respectively.

 “After Covid-19, consumers in the UAE and Saudi Arabia are being more cautious when it comes to spending their discretionary incomes,” Lovrenc Kessler, a Managing Partner at Simon-Kucher Dubai office, said.

However, he said that they are optimistic with the high levels of expected spending – Black Friday is still seen as an attractive moment to save money on purchases planned.

“This reveals a major opportunity for retailers to sharpen their promotions and maximize cross-sell opportunities as consumers will be browsing across multiple categories,” he said.

The survey revealed that consumer preferences lean towards online shopping in the majority of countries – most popular is in China, where 70 per cent of those surveyed said they plan to shop online. In the UAE and Saudi Arabia, preferences still favour offline shopping but only marginally.