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~ Pattern ~

MEET

IN THE

MIDDLE

Text: Joanna Perry // Photos: Pattern

Marketplaces are booming in the United Arab Emirates, and they provide cross-border
as well as domestic opportunities for brands to get their products into the hands of the
country’s affluent, young consumers.

onsumers in the UAE flocked online during marketplace’s Prime Day promotional event falling in that
lockdown, and although Dubai’s mega-malls are month this year.
Copen once more, traffic figures for key marketplaces
in the region show that consumers are continuing to buy At the time of writing, the region was preparing for White
online in greater numbers. This provides an opportunity Friday—the local name for Black Friday—and promotions
for consumer brands to reach Middle Eastern customers had also run earlier in the month to coincide with Alibaba’s
with a cross-border solution, as well as with products that 11.11 Shopping Festival. We are predicting that November
are fulfilled locally. Both Amazon’s UAE site and its new 2020 will see a new traffic high for the marketplace.
Saudi Arabia site offer products through Global Store
that are shipped from the USA, to enhance the selection The other significant marketplace in the region, Noon, has
available to consumers and meet the demand for Western seen a similar ramping of traffic to its desktop and mobile site
goods. Sellers can also choose to list products directly on in the past 12 months. Noon sells in the UAE, Saudi Arabia
these platforms and fulfil orders cross-border. Below we go and Egypt, and is regularly the number one shopping app in
into detail on the upward trend as well as our experiences of the first two of those markets. It reports more than 30 million
using marketing to drive sales on Amazon.ae specifically. total downloads of its app to date.

Traffic spike These traffic spikes are translating into more sales. Online
Amazon.ae’s monthly sessions and unique users have both sales in the UAE are predicted to rise by 24% to US$19.8
hit numbers not seen since November 2019, the peak billion for 2020 compared to the previous year. And the
trading period, according to data from SimilarWeb. Sessions latest forward predictions show that the pace of growth
for October 2020 hit 20.3 million—almost equalling the will continue to be double-digit. Statista predicts 2021
20.8 million of November 2019—and were driven by the e-commerce sales for the UAE will be another record year at

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