Neighbourhood Watch: What is Dubai's USP for its retail offering?

When you go shopping, do you easily find what you want? Do you find a repeat of shops in all the malls with the exception of a few originals? Do you find the latest designs or are they often last year's stock? How many times do you look in a shop for an item and they have only a basic selection in colour, size and style?

What is Dubai's USP for its retail offering? As time has passed the proposition that goods are a better value here versus other markets throughout the world is no longer a blanket statement that can be justified. Apart from the savings in VAT, there is very little price differential in most cases between Dubai and other major retail markets.

In some cases goods are actually higher priced. With the expansion of the retail sector in terms of pure scale or total amount of space being added to the market, how are these projects going to differentiate themselves and their offerings?

It is already evident that most malls contain similar offerings while others are trying very hard to bring in new brands to the market. Clearly there are sufficient jewelry, perfume, and cosmetic stores here and one would think very little justification for bringing any new ones into the market. Having said that, what does the market need?

In the writer's opinion there are insufficient shoe stores with a depth of merchandise in terms of sizing and style, and there is certainly a lack of women's clothing stores that cater to a more mature market rather than simply the trendy club wear set. I would suggest that the same applies to men's clothing and accessories as well.

There are a great many people who actually travel out of the market to shop because they can do so. The rest of us rely on the offers of merchandise being made available to us here in Dubai.

Is it time for Dubai's major players to sit down and determine a means by which all the competing offers may in fact work together in order to create sufficient variety and value, rather than simply repeating the same offering dressed up a little differently?

This is part of a larger more global strategy for how Dubai can, in fact, take the role and have the reputation that Hong Kong and Singapore enjoyed as shopping and leisure centre.

Yes, the density of captive population is not here, but it is growing and will catch up with the current residential building boom as it has in past times. In order to achieve the target of 10 million visitors by 2010 and growing, the major retail marketplace will have to have a unified strategy or it will not survive the competition within itself.

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