Even as the pace of consolidation accelerates in Dubai’s eCommerce industry, what is already becoming clear is that Facebook is emerging as a primary platform to generate sales.

Given the wide reach social media has in the region, its pioneering tools such as video ads, and the more recent AudienceDirect initiative is helping to propel sales in the mid-income segment of the market. It gives impetus to the tectonic shift in consumer preferences for online shopping unleashed in the last year or so.

Even as the largest eCommerce websites have been taken over in recent weeks, there is an exciting wave of online sales initiatives that have proliferated among social media platforms, most notably on Facebook.

Crucially, with the ability to target specific demographics — not only by area, but also by gender and age — marketers have been able to pinpoint the segment they wish to tap into in Dubai.

What this has allowed is the ability for online sites to have increasingly lower barriers to entry, leading to the “long tail” phenomena; an increasing array of small merchants targeting very specific buyer demographics.

In Dubai, this has resulted in a number of companies targeting various segments such as ethnic-based products and services that would otherwise be lost in larger websites.

Perhaps, even more critically, advertising has itself become language specific, with call centres and customer support programmes catering to these demographics.

It is curious to note that these marketing initiatives have thus far not been tapped into by the larger players. That appears to be inevitable as consolidation will continues to be the predominant theme in the industry over the near term.

However, what this has allowed is an exciting number of home-grown initiatives, especially catering to the lower segments, something that traditional malls have been reluctant in going after.

With video content now becoming increasingly popular online, marketing messages have become even more specific, tapping into the cultural zeitgeist of the wider demographic base the city has to offer.

In an exciting development, TV-like programming is now being offered on social media platforms, astonishing and delighting customers simultaneously.

Given the ubiquity of the camera, such content is being generated at an astonishing rate, offering customers the variety of products not available through traditional retail channels.

Given the low barriers to entry, these websites (increasingly being hosted on social media platforms), appear to be the next target for consolidation, and it appears likely that the larger ones will be the subject for takeover.

The trick remains to be able to have curated content as these websites get consolidated into a larger platform. At the back-end, the logistics and customer support services may not offer the traditional economies of scale that accrue when companies merge.

More crucially, given the non-overlapping product base that these merchants cater to in their various segments, there might not even be purchasing synergies, with the only savings accruing — perhaps — from the consolidation of the technology platforms.

Perhaps, for these reasons, that there hasn’t yet been a consolidation wave sparked in this segment of the market. However, given the experience of larger and more developed economies, it is merely a matter of time before the current kaleidoscope of fragmentation is tackled head on by larger players.

With the rapid pace of change enveloping the retail industry, it is difficult to not get carried away by the enthusiasm that has infected the marketplace. What is exciting is that digital commerce has finally been able to penetrate the bottom of the pyramid in a cost-effective manner in Dubai.

Evolutionarily, this has been achieved far quicker than that observed in the developed world. The inevitable pace of consolidation sweeping the upper echelons of eCommerce may be grabbing all the headlines, but what is of more significance is the number of offerings in the lower to mid-income space.

It remains to be seen how quickly this segment achieves and overtakes the scale at the upper end of the retail spectrum.

— The writer is the head of online operations at GCP Group.