UAE full of spendaholics? Three quarters shop for clothes and cosmetics just once a month

New survey finds around 22 per cent shop once every six months, but 10 per cent admit to spending between Dh1,000 and Dh5,000 on cosmetics per month.

Shoppers go about their business at Wahda Mall in Abu Dhabi. Silvia Razgova / The National

The UAE may boast the most retail space per person in the region, but residents may not be the spendaholics many assume them to be.

Around three quarters of us shop for clothes and cosmetics once a month or less, a new survey suggests.

The majority, at almost 53 per cent, buy the items once a month, while around 22 per cent only shop for clothes and cosmetics once every six months.

Around the same number, about 23 per cent, said they shopped for the goods once a week. No one ticked the option for three times a week, and only a tiny proportion - at 0.9 per cent each - said they shop either daily, once a year or never for clothes and cosmetics.

"I would have thought it would be more frequently," said Ashley Roberts, event director, dmg events Middle East. "Certainly I would have thought the respondents for once a week would have been much greater."

But while it may seem that the results suggests that UAE residents do not like to shop as much as previously thought, the opposite is in fact true, according to one analyst.

"If you sum all [the percentages] you get a figure and divide that into 52 weeks a year and you will get your average purchase frequency," said Richard Adams, a director and senior consultant at Acuity Middle East.

"And if anything the purchase cycles are much shorter than you would expect. To have an average cycle of 2.5 weeks that is incredibly high."

The study was carried out by organisers of the Life & Style Show, the largest consumer lifestyle event in the Middle East that will be held in Abu Dhabi this December. The survey questioned almost 500 men and women about their shopping habits in March.

One area where most people would probably agree is that Dh5,000 is a lot of money to spend on mak-up and beauty products a month.

Almost 10 per cent of respondents in the survey admitted to spending between Dh1,000 and Dh5,000 on cosmetics in the period. The majority, 51 per cent, spent between Dh50 and Dh400.