72% of in-store shoppers in UAE likely to use smartphones to enhance shopping experience

Seventy-two percent of in-store shoppers in the UAE said they are more likely than others to use their smartphones to enhance their shopping experience. They use smartphone to particularly look up product information and compare prices at other merchants using their devices. UAE consumers’ strong penchant for mobile-enabled shopping experiences is one of many traits that make the country’s e-commerce market unique globally.

Key findings from the survey include:

Smartphones are integral to both the in-store and remote shopping experience in the UAE. 65% of UAE consumers used smartphones at some point throughout their most recent retail journeys, regardless of whether they were shopping in-store or remotely online. This makes them 52% more likely to use their smartphone at any time for any reason than the average consumer in all six countries [including Australia, Brazil, Mexico, the UK, the US and the UAE] studied in the report. About 60% consumers have used their smartphones for in-store shopping while over one-third (32%) completed their last purchase entirely via a smartphone.

UAE shoppers use in-store and curbside pickup options more frequently than those in other countries. Nearly one-third of all local e-commerce shoppers picked up their most recent purchases in-store or via curbside pickup, which is more frequent than shoppers in other countries.

UAE merchants are striving to deliver mobile-enabled retail experience. UAE merchants are far more likely than their counterparts in other countries to provide mobile-based features for their brick-and-mortar shoppers. 70% of merchants offer cross-channel digital profiles, allowing consumers to access their identification and payment information both in-store and online. In other words, UAE merchants are 10% more likely than the average merchant across all six countries to provide digital profiles that their shoppers can access both in-store and online.

UAE merchants provide the cross-channel shopping features consumers want but not of the quality they demand, exacerbating shopping frictions. UAE consumers who order items on their smartphones and pick them up in-store encounter 35% more shopping friction than the average across all six countries, indicating that the quality of the mobile features they are using may not be on par with those seen elsewhere. Nevertheless, the shoppers who use these features while shopping in-store encounter 10% less shopping friction than those that do not use the features in-store.

Based on PYMNTS and Visa Cybersource’s survey findings