Dubai: Customers in the UAE spend an average of Dh3,000 on consumer electronics per year, a survey conducted by Plug Ins revealed on Sunday.
The first-of-its-kind survey looked at four key categories — smartphones, TVs, latops/tablets and cameras.
“The consumer electronics market is challenging because there are lot of retailers in the market. The challenge is to get the new technologies to the market first as the rest of the world,” Sean Connor, General Manager of Plug Ins, told Gulf News after the press conference.
He said that Dubai is a hub for different nationalities and they want to keep their hunger for new technologies. The consumer electronics market is expected to be worth between $3 billion to $5 billion.
He said the survey was conducted through multiple channels including online and across its eight stores gathered responses from 1,172 participants across 96 nationalities over a period of 30 days.
According to the survey, 51.4 per cent of the respondents believe their purchase decisions are affected by online review/research as compared to only 22.4 per cent who suggest their purchases were affected by print media while 59.2 per cent said that they are influenced by in-store communication prior to purchase.
“The industry lacks customer-rich trends and inspired us to create and conduct a survey that would record the pulse of consumer needs and purchasing habits in the country. We plan to run this survey twice a year and make the data available to the industry and consumers alike,” Connor said.
In currently owned brands, Samsung (37.1 per cent) is rated higher than Apple (24.5 per cent) and BlackBerry stands at 19.5 per cent.
While choosing a smartphone, Connor said brand is considered the most important factor (62.1 per cent), followed by features (56 per cent) and price (45.7 per cent).
“Apart from the fact that personal income in the region is so high to allow people purchase throughout the year, smartphones, tablets and laptops will continue to lead consumer demand and TV panels and SLRs will follow,” Neelesh Bhatnagar, CEO of Emax Electronics, told Gulf News.
Connor said Apple and Samsung will continue to lead the tablet market. For TV panels, Samsung and LG televisions will be the most sought after with their new OLED Technology. Competing brands are also looking to increase their market share in general.
“When a customer plans to buy an electronic device, the choice is made by carefully studying the product, comparing it against its competitors and checking out the promotion wherein the price discount plays a very important role,” said Niranjan Gidwani, Deputy CEO, Eros Group.
“Currently, 51.4 per cent of the respondents said they own a panel size between 32-39 inches followed by 40-42 inches at 33.6 per cent. 50-inch is the fastest growing panel size – current ownership is 3.9 per cent while planned purchase is 19.4 per cent. Top two reasons for buying a new TV are resolution (63 per cent) and device compatibility (50.5 per cent),” the survey showed.
When buying a laptop/tablet, respondents are influenced by the brand (82.6 per cent), followed by app availability (54.2 per cent)
Around 67 per cent of the respondents own tablets and 91.7 per cent own laptops.
“We believe conducting this survey bi-annually will keep the data we collect relevant and current throughout the year. We plan to incorporate the key findings of this survey into the way we look at our commercial functions — including buying the right products, training our staff and the visual look and feel of our stores,” said Connor.
