65% of UAE Consumers Use Smartphones to Improve Shopping Experience

Most UAE consumers have their smartphones handy when shopping online or in-store.

That finding comes from the 2022 Global Digital Shopping Index report, a PYMNTS and Cybersource collaboration, which relied on data from 2,015 consumer responses and 500 merchant interviews conducted in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

Read the report: 2022 Global Digital Shopping Index: UAE Edition

In fact, the report showed that throughout their most recent retail journeys, 65% UAE shoppers used smartphones at some point. This represents a 52% increase in usage compared to the average consumer across all six countries in our study — Australia, Brazil, Mexico, UAE, U.S. and the U.K. — “to use their smartphones at any time, for any reason,” the report added.

Emiratis are also 55% more likely than consumers in any other country surveyed to complete their shopping journeys entirely via smartphone, per the report, further highlighting how critical connected devices are to enhancing the consumer shopping experience in this highly mobile-centric market.

Read also: 30% of UAE SMB Customers Pay Online Using Digital Wallets, Highest in 6-Country Study

This strong preference for mobile commerce is particularly noticeable in the in-store shopping practices of local shoppers.

The research found that 59% of brick-and-mortar shoppers in the Middle Eastern country used smartphones to enhance their most recent in-store purchases — significantly higher than the 33% of consumers across all six countries who did so.

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