Dubai: The Ramadan promotions are starting early this year with the e-retailer noon Daily going live with a ‘75 per cent off’ on groceries and household needs from April 1. Its campaign – with offers updated daily – will run until May 12.
This year, online portals hope to get in on the action at the first opportunity and thus force physical stores to catching up. With shoppers more inclined to make bulk purchases, coming in early on deals for groceries and everyday needs will come in handy.
“The team has worked hard over the past few months to ensure we have the best assortment of products at incredible prices for customers shopping on noon before and for the duration of Ramadan,” said Maya El Ayach, Digital Strategy & Growth, noon. “We’re committed to making this a successful time for the thousands of local sellers, too. Our sellers use noon as their digital store, utilizing our huge last-mile fleet, marketing services and more to reach millions of shoppers in the region.”
Match up
The UAE’s big supermarket chains will have details of their counter offers in the coming days… or hours. They have their own online platforms, which did remarkably well during the lockdown months and thereafter. And the year 2020 has been one big learning curve for retailers here.
So much so, 2021 represents the first time many of those learnings will be put to use. “The online gains keep on happening – UAE sales via these channels are expected 60 per cent of what was there between January to March last year,” said Sandeep Ganediwalla, Regional Partner at RedSeer Consulting.
If 70 per cent of UAE shoppers bought something online 12 months ago, that number has shot up to 90 per cent by end of 2020. What’s more important, once they did so, they are sticking with online for part of their purchase requirements.
“Whether it’s five times, 10 or 20 a year, UAE shoppers are showing a stickiness for online buying,” said Ganediwalla. “That’s the biggest change brought on by COVID-19 induced changes to shopping – higher frequency of online buys.”
