Market Assessment & Entry Strategy Formulation for a UAE Retail Cooperative Society

Client Situation

Our client is a cooperative society and leading retail chain in the UAE. It had 43 branches across the country and revenues exceeding AED 1.6 Bn as of 2016. Its management was keen to grow its business and revenues by adding about 60 more stores across the UAE.

Cedar’s Approach

To materialize its vision, the client had mandated Cedar to perform an assessment of the market potential and develop the entry and way forward strategies. Cedar’s approach was as follows:

Program initiation: Validation of objectives, approach, timelines, and determination of internal data sources
Internal Assessment: Financial and operating data assessment; primary meetings with key executives
Market and Competitive Assessment: Analysis of market and competitive data; identification of local and international benchmarks; and primary meetings with select competitors, partners, and customers
Report Development: Development of market growth recommendations; expansion prioritization; and development of implementation plan
Final Presentation: Report presentation and consensus building

Outcome

Some of the key outcomes of this program were as follows:

Sales analysis was conducted across food products categories to identify the right product mix through insights such as the fact that general foods accounted for the largest share of products and had an 11% growth rate
Development of customer profiles to gain insights such as the facts that Asian expatriates made up 39% of overall customers and about 43% of competitor’s customers were Emiratis
Multiple level filtering and using parameters such as population, population density, demographic classification, area classification, consumer spending indicators, rental rates and competitor presence to identify and rank relevant micro-markets for the client
Development of a way-forward strategy:

A total of 103 branches projected across UAE in 3-4 years
Of the 60 new outlets, 46 would be micro-markets
Recommendation of specific new outlet locations: 12 in Abu Dhabi, 7 in Al Ain, 22 in Dubai, 14 in Sharjah, with the rest spread across the other Emirates