Dubai DED rates retail outlets

Hypermarkets came second in the Dubai DED ratings followed by apparel, electronics, furniture and car agency sectors. — Reuters

A first-of-its-kind initiative in the region led by the Department of Economic Development (DED), recently looked into the most popular business outlets in six key business sectors across Dubai and found that coffee shops were rated the topmost in consumer experience.

Hypermarkets came second followed by the apparel, electronics, furniture and car agency sectors in that order. The main aim of the rating process was to understand the level of compliance to the Consumer Code of Rights stated in the Federal Law No 24 of 2006 and reinforce the message that consumer rights protection is a shared responsibility between retailers and consumers.

The rating was based on consumer opinions of individual outlets tracked over a period of nine months from April to December 2013 and consumer complaints received by DED as well as the extent of parity/fair pricing for a pre-determined basket of products/services. Consumers were asked to evaluate the outlet based on service quality, billing transparency, and sharing of warranty information by salesperson in addition to overall satisfaction.

Omar Bushahab, chief executive officer of the Commercial Compliance and Consumer Protection (CCCP) sector in DED, said: “We wanted the rating to primarily focus on consumer experience. In a net score of 100, consumer opinion fetched the highest share of 60 per cent while the consumer complaints factor and fair pricing were given 20 per cent each.”

Bushahab added that classifying retail outlets on the basis of consumer-friendliness will promote service excellence, competitiveness and cordial relations between consumers and retailers while also building awareness on consumer rights and protecting them in line with DED’s strategic objective to encourage best practices in the retail sector. “The retail sector, being a major driver of economic development in Dubai, should reflect a high level of service quality 
and transparency that Dubai promotes as the hallmarks of its competitiveness. The Consumer Friendliness Index will also help us evaluate retail sector performance and areas that need improvement,” Bushahab explained.

Complaints’ resolution was the strongest factor that propelled coffee shops into the top spot with an aggregate score of 70.07 out of 100. All seven coffee shops evaluated won full points (20 out of 20) in the complaints criterion and average consumer rating was 40.07 out of 60.

Hypermarkets are evenly poised in the price and consumer rating criteria but show big differences in their approach to complaints. The average aggregate score for the sector is 68.50/100 but the outlet that had the lowest aggregate of 61.99 also stood last in complaints resolution with 9.04/20 even though there are hypermarkets that got full points in this regard.

Apparels and furniture outlets shows huge gaps in prices and their respective sector aggregate scores are 67.76 and 64.69 out of 100. The top scorer in apparels has 17.67 out of 20 and the lowest score is 4.33, while the corresponding scores for the furniture sector are 14.8 and 4.25. However, stores deemed expensive in both sectors also show full compliance to complaints resolution and consumer rating of outlets is almost balanced in both sectors.

• business@khaleejtimes.com