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28 March 2024

Why women ruled during this DSF

Published
By Staff

The Dubai Shopping Festival (DSF), the largest shopping and entertainment extravaganza in the Middle East, celebrated its 21st anniversary this year.

DSF commenced from January 1 under the tagline ‘Unwrap The Exceptional’. It acquired more than 2,550 mentions on social media in the UAE between January 1 and February 1.

An analysis of the comments on social media for DSF by Meltwater, an intelligence firm that offers tools for online news and social media monitoring, showed female participation at around 90 per cent compared to men at just 10 per cent.

Meltwater’s analysis also revealed that the highest amount of the conversations about DSF took place on Twitter (86.63 per cent) followed by Facebook (13.20 per cent).

What trended, and when

The highest volume of conversations took place on Friday, January 22, with the most popular hashtags representing the event #DSF2016 and #MyDSF used approximately 91.2 per cent.

The data shows that a little more than half (50.72 per cent) positive mentions included comments about DSF celebrations at the Global Village, Global Village World Party, celebrity presence, Carnival at the Beach JBR, and Disney’s Beauty and the Beast show.

Every day through DSF, Visa customers were able to avail themselves incredible offers when purchasing with Visa card.

Also, giving complete access to all retail festive offers, Adib Dubai Festivals App introduced by Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank (Adib) listed all the Dubai Shopping Festival 2016 retail offers in one place, these DSF offers introduced by Visa and Adib were mentioned around 625 times.

The ‘talk of the town’ entertainment shows that took place during DSF were comedy rock-star Russell Peters’ ‘Almost Famous World Tour’ to Dubai on January 19 and 20 at the Dubai World Trade Centre. With record attendance at the show, conversations peaked to 37.2 per cent, with hashtag #RussellPetersDXB.

Which malls, which days?

MallMate, a shopping app, has also released usage data on top trending shopping experiences during the month-long DSF.

Mall of the Emirates was the most popular mall in Dubai, Yas Mall the most popular mall in Abu Dhabi and Zara the most popular store while January 6 was recorded as the busiest shopping day throughout the month.

Based on MallMate data, the top two most popular shopping days were in the first week of DSF, (January 6 and 2), likely so shoppers could grab deals while items and sizes were still in stock.  Unsurprisingly, Friday and Saturday were the most popular days of the week as shoppers went to the malls over the weekend.

Overall shopper engagement was strongest in the first two weeks of the month, while week 3 was the slowest.

The app also tracked the most popular malls that shoppers visited. In Dubai, Mall of the Emirates took the top spot, followed by The Dubai Mall, Mirdiff City Centre, Deira City Centre and Dubai Outlet Mall. Yas Mall was the most popular mall in Abu Dhabi, followed by Al Wahda Mall, Abu Dhabi Mall, Marina Mall and Dalma Mall.

The most popular brands during DSF, starting with Zara at the top and H&M a close second – as they were brands that proved extremely popular with both men and women – followed by Adidas, Victoria’s Secret, Nike, Forever 21, Bath & Body Works and Sephora.