Clipping from coverage of the Middle East Retail Forum Marketing Conclave in Dubai. Mentioning Michael Leander (speaker), Leonard Otto, retail expert Simon Hathaway, Shawn Sipman, Natasha Rockstrom, Nandakumar Vijayan, Kritika Rawat and others.

1. 52 www.imagesretailme.comANNUAL 2015
You need a brilliant idea to buy into
An organisation should aim for
three outcomes. You must build
customer loyalty. You must
make your customers advocate
your brand and act as brand
ambassadors. And, if you make a
mistake, their long-term loyalty
should make them forgive you.
– Abdulla Mahmood
P
roduct, price and space matter.
However, what matters even more
today is the customer experience.
Retail’s new-age customers are not just
those who walk into a store but also
those who sit at home – or even at work
– browsing and purchasing online, the
kings/queens of all they survey.
Spoilt for choice, they care little about
loyalty, more about experiences and
stories. It’s a buyer’s market retailers
have to contend with, unlike many
years ago when sellers dominated. Back
then, retailers didn’t care much about
marketing their products. Today, they
can’t ignore marketing initiatives.
The Marketing Conclave examined ways
and means of devising a game-changing
experience for the savvy, well-informed,
always connected consumers of today to
gain their loyalty.
Personalisation is
a great way to win hearts
“Every time we have a new experience, it
resets our expectations,” says international
marketing specialist Simon Hathaway,
president & global head of RX (retail
experience), Cheil Worldwide. “Each day
our expectations are being transformed
by technology. Today, I have my personal
You need to take customer opinion
seriously to keep them coming
back. And to keep them visiting,
engage with them through
different channels and inform them
about the latest product launches.
– Abhish Chandok
shopping mall on my smartphone to access
my favourite brands anytime, anywhere.”
“We are in the business of customers,”
adds Lennard Otto, general manager
of IMG Worlds of Adventure, among
the largest of Dubai’s upcoming indoor
themed-entertainment destinations. “They
are the focal point. We call them guests
who pay to buy an experience from us.
We concentrate on three components
to offer them a memorable experience
– personalisation, engagement and
entertainment.”
“Personalisation is a great way to win
the hearts of today’s customers because
they aspire to stand out in a crowd. We
have to harness and use data judiciously
and entertain them to engage them
constructively if we are to increase their
dwell time and spend. Apple stores are
good examples of how to do this. People
spend a lot of time in them, engaging
with the products. We will do the same
at IMG Worlds of Adventure. We will

2. 53www.imagesretailme.com ANNUAL 2015
what percentage of their customer base is
from which region,” points out Srikanth
Parthasarathy, senior vice president of
Dubai-based furniture and furnishing
concept Homes R Us.
“Customer profiling is a bigger
challenge in the UAE, especially Dubai,
because of the eclectic demographic
profile and distribution. If retailers
succeed in profiling their customers,
they would solve some of their bigger
challenges. Probably that’s why Dubai
often serves as the testing ground for
retailers to first test their concepts before
going beyond,” he adds.
There are various ways
to deliver on a promise
If you know your customers you know
what to deliver. “That’s critical for
retailers – to deliver the exact expectation
they set for customers as part of their
marketing pitch,” Hathaway observes.
But that’s a fine line to decipher, feels
Abhish Chandok, general manager –
marketing Russia, Middle East and Africa,
Himalaya Drug Company. “As brand
owners and marketers, we tend to end
up confusing our consumers. Consider
the number and range of face washes
available in the market – for normal, oily,
dry and combination skin types. The list
is endless, confusing the consumer. In the
name of segmentation and personalisation
we fragment the market. So the onus is on
us to simplify the paths to purchase – and
there are various ways of doing that,” he
comments.
Yes, there are diverse ways,
complements Abdulla Mahmood,
director – marketing and corporate
communication of UAE-based Al Ahli
Holding Group. “Educate, engage,
entertain, empower and excite – these
were our guidelines when we developed
Comicave, the world’s largest pop culture
store in Dubai.”
“How did we do this? We divided our
store into zones – sci-fi to attract science
fiction buffs, Marvel and DC for graphic
comic book enthusiasts. We created an
immersive environment, hiring comic
book enthusiasts to engage with our
customers. We also created a concept
A Harvard study showed that
around 89% of people believe the
customer experience and loyalty
are enriched if store staff converse
with them in their home language.
So speaking in your customer’s
language is important, especially
in Dubai, which has a multicultural
expatriate community and sees a
huge tourist influx.
– Lennard Otto
Retailers must use their
brands to build an emotional
connect with consumers, who
make a place for brands they
like. So it’s very important to
keep in touch with consumers.
– Kritika Rawat
entertain our guests with amusement,
entertainment, F&B and retail,” he
elaborates.
A fulfilling guest experience isn’t
limited to gigantic indoor theme parks. It
applies to mass market retailing too, like
hypermarkets.
“People come to shop at our Lulu
Hypermarkets with a certain expectation.
So what can we do to ensure a great
customer experience?” asks Nandakumar
Vijayan, chief communications officer of
Abu Dhabi-based retail conglomerate Lulu
Group International.
“We changed our tagline to ‘Where
the world comes to shop’ to change
perception of Lulu Hypermarket catering
only to the Asian community. People don’t
expect to be entertained when they shop
for groceries. But we began entertaining
our global audience by celebrating their
festivals, focusing on particular product
categories they connect with. We saw
the positive impact as growing traffic
converted into growing sales,” he shares.
But that requires a better understanding
of customers and where they’re coming
from. “Customer profiling in the Gulf
region isn’t easy, given its multicultural
nature. Retailers can’t exactly pinpoint
Loyalty today is aligned to
engagement and experience.
In addition to deploying
innovative technology solutions,
retailers need to hire the right
people who understand the
significance of creating the
right customer experience.
– Mustafa Sadek

3. 54 www.imagesretailme.comANNUAL 2015
experience could be through delivering
goods to your doorstep for free or
reimbursing your parking charges. That’s
where omnichannel can be effectively
used,” he comments.
Mustafa Sadek, founder & CEO of
Dubai-based customer engagement
and loyalty platform UrbanBuz, holds a
similar view. “For some reason, loyalty
has been made synonymous with a card.
That’s changing slowly. It’s being aligned
to engagement and experience. Take
the examples of Apple and Nike that
built loyalty without having a loyalty
programme. These brands created the
required experience, building a strong
relationship with their customers. Of
course, part of the experience is rewards
and incentives,” he expands.
You need the right people
with the right mindset
“To understand loyalty you need to look
at the whole customer journey, which no
longer revolves around the store. That
journey starts before they walk into the
store and continues after they leave.
It’s important to understand this. While
technology is an enabler, people matter
more. You can use the best and most
advanced technologies to understand the
customer journey but if you don’t have
relevant and personalised manner,” he
expounds.
Loyalty grows with
engagement and experience
Does personalisation promote loyalty?
Nandakumar thinks a loyal customer is
a myth today. A retailer may issue a card
and offer points on every purchase to keep
customers loyal. But if they forget to bring
their card when shopping, they don’t earn
points. So where does loyalty stand then?
“Our research shows that consumers
don’t necessarily return to retailers
because of their loyalty card. They go
back for a new product launch or sale.
Or they are loyal to the brand for some
other reason. So the card and the points
don’t really make a customer loyal. It’s
something else. It’s the experience that
brings them back to the store. That
The onus of building a context
is on advertisers. They should
differentiate the brand message
on different channels – outdoor,
television, radio, print, social
media. While the process has
become more sophisticated today,
it’s also easier. Brands can identify
their target audience with tools like
Audience Insights freely available
to every Facebook user. They can
reach them with relevant and
personalised messages that are
specifically tailored to communicate
effectively in the chosen channel.
– Narain Jashanmal
A consumer is loyal till the time
she is in your store. Once she
leaves, loyalty can’t be guaranteed.
So retailers must create new ways
and means to keep customers
entertained and bring them back.
– Nandakumar Vijayan
called the Volt, a special door that opens
only on certain occasions to entertain
visitors with fun competitions and
games,” he explains.
Building an emotional
connect with consumers
What’s really interesting is the emergence
of new technology and platforms,
especially social media, that enable
retailers to build a connect with the
community and drive sales, Hathaway
points out.
Narain Jashanmal, head of direct
response advertising, MENA, Facebook/
Instagram, sees commerce as one of
Facebook’s central activities today – be
it pages maintained by commerce-based
organisations or community-based groups
dealing in second hand goods. “A key
reason why this is so important for us
is because if you think of web 1.0 and
the way people found products on their
desktops, it was really about search. But
search captures only active, not passive,
intent. Personalisation works much better
on social media sites. It’s about tapping
into the right demand, complemented by
the right products and services in a highly
Businesses are beginning to
design their agenda out of love
as they realise the importance of
tapping into this social context.
– Natasha Rockstrom

4. 55www.imagesretailme.com ANNUAL 2015
the right people, your endeavour could
be futile. Retailers should hire the right
people who understand the significance of
creating the right customer experience,”
Sadek explains.
“Retailers must change and empower
their people. That’s the only way they can
hope to understand customer needs, meet
those needs and even go beyond,” adds
Hathaway.
Gifting is a way of growing “We have
to first get both perspectives right – of
retailers and consumers – if we are
to align the proposition of driving
additional footfall to stores with customer
expectations. We address this through the
gifting proposition. How can a brand –
whether entertainment, grocery or fashion
– get into gifting? It must give a reason for
productising the gifting concept,” says TP
Pratap, chief marketing officer of India-
based gift card technology and retail firm
QwikCilver Solutions.
The company claims the proposition
works wonders because gifting strikes
the right balance between emotionally
connecting with consumers, keeping
in mind their likes and dislikes, and
popularising brands to drive commerce
for the retailers.
“A big part of my job is selling brands
by advertising on radio,” shares Kritika
Rawat, managing director of Kkompany.
“We have a lot of marketing people
coming to us and we design campaigns for
them. I think marketing professionals in
this part of the world are very traditional,
conventional and archaic.”
“They come with the urge to be
different but don’t really want to do things
differently. They want to do the same
thing, yet be different. They want their
brand name and tag line five times in a
sentence. What they don’t understand is
that consumers have to experience the
brand and tag line rather than simply
hearing the name. They don’t have to
memorise the tag line. However, it’s
difficult to convince marketing heads
of companies to change their outlook.
They have to look beyond their brand
to emotionally connect and engage with
consumers,” she suggests.
Tapping into the
social context to connect
However, Hathaway feels brands are now
beginning to realise the value of doing
things for the right reasons.
It’s a view Natasha Rockstrom,
co-founder of Injoy Giving, a gifting
website in the UAE that makes it easier
for residents to engage in charity, shares.
“What we do for love outweighs what we
do for greed. Businesses are beginning
to design their agenda out of love as they
realise the importance of tapping into
this social context. We did an exercise
recently where we ran a priceless menu
at a restaurant one evening, with people
coming in and paying whatever they
thought was worth for the food and
services. That evening, the restaurant
made 125% more than what their actual
retail prices would have got them. That’s
how we evoked deeper human ties. That’s
how we build brand loyalty,” she relates.
“Every business needs to have a
purpose,” observes Nisha Varman
Shetty, founder of The Urban Yogi, a
home-grown sustainable furniture and
furnishing retailer. “The journey is never
easy. When we started The Urban Yogi in
2012, shopping malls weren’t receptive
to smaller brands in their premises. We
had to improvise, putting up pop-up
outlets from time-to-time because the
brand had to grow. But we were lucky to
have Facebook to help us in building the
brand, one like at a time, and growing our
customer base,” she recounts.
“Today, consumers are smart. They are
We use words like customers,
consumers and shoppers. What
we forget is they are all people.
They are human beings. So
marketers must understand
that a personal connection
needs to be established to make
brands click among real people.
– Simon Hathaway
Loyalty is an abstract thing but it
can definitely be measured. What
matters is how retailers connect
with their guests, eventually making
them loyal brand ambassadors.
– Nisha Varman Shetty
Retailers can solve some of their
bigger challenges if they do their
customer profiling successfully.
– Srikanth Parthasarathy

5. 56 www.imagesretailme.comANNUAL 2015
only when a customer intends to make a purchase
or actually buys. It’s important to remember a
simple rule about human nature: People may
forget what you say or do, but they never forget
how you treated them. If you treat your customers
well, there’s a higher possibility they’ll be loyal
to you. But they will also expect the same or
better services the next time they shop with you,”
Leander continues.
“Why do we go to Starbucks and pay a
premium to buy a cup of coffee after standing in
the queue? It’s because of the experience. You’ve
got to listen to what your customers are saying
across channels – in-store, online and on social
media – if you want to offer them the kind of
experience they’re looking for. But even listening
doesn’t mean a thing if you don’t respond. That’s
something retailers must understand and take
seriously. The tone of voice must be correct
while interacting with customers across multiple
channels,”he advises.
“What’s also important is customer service at
the point of sale. Most retailers aren’t doing this
well despite the right technology being available.
They have to step up the game if they want to
please the customers of today and tomorrow.
They can do this by customising the experience
from start to end of the customer journey – pre,
during and post purchase. However, there can’t be
a one-size-fits-all solution,”Leander cautions.
“What matters is the value addition you
One barometer to test brand loyalty
is to see whether consumers are
willing to prepay to avail a service
or product later. Today, the best
of brands don’t have that. The
experience is more significant than
the product itself.
– TP Pratap
keen to know how the products are made,
how the wood is sourced, whether trees
were felled, whether working conditions
for artisans are humane and so on. They
are becoming more and more conscious
about these elements. That’s why we do
a lot of storytelling. Loyalty is an abstract
thing but it can definitely be measured.
What matters is how retailers connect
with their guests, eventually making them
loyal brand ambassadors,” Shetty avers.
“Of course, there must be a product to
buy to begin with, but, importantly, there
must also be a brilliant idea for them
to buy into,” summarises Hathaway. “If
retailers get that right, the associated
elements fall in place.”
Listen, don’t be indifferent
to customers
“What’s the biggest reason why customers
leave you,”asks Michael Leander, CEO of The
Michael Leander Company. “Is it because they
are influenced by friends? Is it because they are
attracted by competition? Or is it because your
indifference turns them away?”
“Almost 68% are driven away by indifference,”
he says.
“Think about it! Brands tend to be attentive
offer to your customers, who walk into a store
expecting something. If they get something more,
something beyond their expectation, that will
build brand loyalty and drive them to share their
experience with the world,”he opines.
Don’t’ confuse your
customer, be relevant
“You must understand the culture of the region
you operate in,”says Shawn Sipman, executive:
customer engagement and commerce, UCS
Solutions. “Essentially, good marketing is ‘Sotho’,
which, in a South African dialect, means ‘people
first’. You must speak your customer’s language.
For example, in Dubai, which has a multicultural
expatriate population and sees a large tourist
influx, retailers must hire store staff that speak
different languages.”
“Retailers must consult with their customers to
set service standards, increase access to services,
ensure higher levels of courtesy, provide more
and better information about services, increase
openness and transparency about services,
remedy failures and mistakes and give the best
possible value for money. All this resonates well
with customers,”he elaborates.
“Marketing initiatives need to be contextual,
relevant and well targeted. It’s a mistake to
bombard customers with messages across
channels that don’t mean anything to them. The
customer journey has changed, with 57% of a sale
happening even before customers touch your
brand. They probably heard about the brand from
a friend, a blog or social media. So the journey
could start at any point, not necessarily at the
store,”Sipman continues.
What’s important is to bring the context into
the marketing initiative. “What retailers really
need to do is deliver the right message to the
right person at the right time,”Sipman suggests.
And while personalisation ensures a greater
customer experience, it goes beyond merely
remembering a customer’s name while sending
her an e-mail or remembering her device settings.
What matters is building a total picture of the
customer, regardless of the device or channel
of interaction. It pays for the retailer to keep the
following things in mind:
■ Capture real-time customer data to assess
intent
■ Deliver consistent content across all
devices, screens and channels
■ Connect personalisation tools to back-end
solutions
■ Leverage the Internet of Things to harness
the collected data
“Retail must be everywhere, instant and personal.
The perception of value has changed. It is no
longer price times quality. It is price times quality
divided by convenience,”he concludes. ■
Michael Leander
Shawn Sipman