Analysis: Mall Culture: The Middle East Region

5. Mall Culture: The Middle East region is known to have very tightly knit communities that still prefer person to person contact. The cosmopolitanism in the region also accounts for this closely knit communities. Citizens, old and young alike, prefer to meet in person and Malls are the usual hangout places. Malls have overtaken parks and other recreational areas as well.
6. Lack of Personal Assistance: Many consumers have cited this as a factor that makes them continue shopping at Brick and Mortar stores. This is also particularly true in the Printer Consumables industry as most consumers may not really remember their Printer name, they type of cartridge they need to buy and other details. By providing good and relevant content related to
Low credit card penetration: Though it may sound unbelievable, the Middle East region has a very low Credit Card Penetration. Credit card penetration in the region is only about 2% and a good 82% of the population does not have bank accounts (Jones, 2014). Though this statistic may seem startling, this is because countries like Iraq, Egypt and the likes are also part of the region and have abysmal penetration rates. Though UAE and other GCC countries have very high penetration rates, they still continue to rely on Cash on Delivery as the major payment mode. The trend has been changing with the availability of Pre-Paid Cards and other payment gateways like PayFort and CashU that local online retailers have developed
8. Delivery Issues: The addressing system in the Region is fairly underdeveloped and as a result there are multiple delivery related issues. A delivery is usually time consuming and involves lots of interactions with the customer for getting the address right. Delay in delivery and the complications involved with the delivery have been cited as a concerns by many consumers With the introduction of the Makani system in the UAE, many of these problems will be resolved, at least in the UAE. Retailers can look at establishing fulfilment centres that can cater to certain
Evaluation of Online Retailers in the UAE (Based on Popularity)
While Evaluating the Websites, multiple factors were considered. The first step was to consider all websites in the Middle East that dealt with E-Commerce. Through a thorough research 43 websites were identified. Initially the Alexa rankings, both global and UAE for these websites were collected. Then the nature of the business of these websites were identified to determine which website can be outright rejected as far as the project’s outcome is concerned. The table below lists these forty three websites.
Table 3: Online Retailers in the UAE Next step was to identify those websites among these forty three that sell Printer Consumables. This was once again done through a comprehensive research by browsing through all relevant websites. Further research was also done to identify if these websites sold Canon Cartridges. As seen from the table below, all but 6 of the websites identified sold Canon cartridges. Even though on first glance that narrows it down to 6 potential candidates that Canon can partner with, there are multiple other factors that need to be considered. Also, all 6 of these websites may not be ideal candidates for