Where’s the connection?

Where’s the connection?

I keep seeing articles in Gulf News reference the number of visitors to shopping centres (footfall), being directly related to consumer spending, but at the same time, providing no evidence of this (“4 of UAE’s biggest projects that will boost consumer spending”, Gulf News, August 7). The newspaper’s writers have been in the country long enough to understand the importance of malls to the social make-up of the UAE society — escaping the heat, entertainment venues, etc. This aspect of ‘footfall’ does not directly correlate to consumer spending or one’s willingness to spend. It is also not related to retail spending, which is very fluid here. Focusing on under-researched articles such as this, is misleading readers and just providing public relations and publicity for certain entities.

From Mr Michael Grantham

Al Ain

Thank you for your feedback. Footfall traffic as a retail metric is widely used in analysis/reports that tackle the state of the market. Whether or not it is an accurate predictor of consumer spending is still debatable. And while you argue that there is no correlation between the two, figures would show otherwise. In the story, the supporting figures include retail sales turnover and an analysis released by the Dubai Chamber of Commerce and Industry, which predicted that the local retail sector will expand to $71 billion (Dh260 billion) by 2021, up from $56.6 billion (Dh208 billion) at the end of 2016.

Gulf News

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