Tabby's 2026 Middle East Shopping Survey: 7 Lessons for Kuwait & GCC Retailers

Tabby's third edition of the Ultimate Middle East Shopping Survey, titled "Retail without excuses," collected responses from 20,999 shoppers across Saudi Arabia and the UAE in November 2025. The respondents span nationalities, ages and income bands — 37% Saudi, plus large Indian, Egyptian and Filipino segments, with 41% aged 30 to 39. It is one of the largest public reads on how Gulf shoppers actually behave heading into 2026.

Kuwait was not surveyed directly, but the Kuwaiti shopper lives inside the same regional reality: a small, dense, mobile-first market with high smartphone penetration, strong purchasing power, and the same apps, marketplaces and payment habits as Riyadh and Dubai. The behaviors Tabby documents in KSA and the UAE are the same expectations your customers in Al Asimah, Hawalli and Al Ahmadi are bringing to your store right now.

The single sentence that frames the whole report: in 2026, inconsistency is more damaging than imperfection. Shoppers move fluidly between channels, devices and payment options, and they expect brands to keep up. Below are the seven findings that should shape how you build, market and sell this year — and what to do about each.

77.2% of product discovery now happens online. Social media leads at 31.3%, followed by browsing stores online (28.2%), in-store browsing (18.6%) and marketplace apps (17.8%). Print magazines are down to 3.1%.

The critical insight: even when the final purchase happens in a physical store, the journey usually starts online — see it on social, research on your site, check reviews on a marketplace, then buy in person. That makes your digital presence revenue infrastructure, not just marketing. It drives store sales too, not only ecommerce.

What to do in Kuwait: treat social and shoppable content as a primary discovery channel, not an afterthought. Make sure your product pages carry clear copy, strong images and reviews — 18.5% of shoppers are frustrated by unclear product descriptions. And don't ignore marketplace visibility, because nearly one in five shoppers discovers products through marketplace apps.

55.3% of shoppers prefer a mix of online and in-store, versus 37.0% online-only and just 7.7% in-store only. Hybrid is the largest segment by far, and these shoppers aren't indecisive — they're strategic. They research and compare online, then visit stores to validate, try or get advice. In fact, 68% usually or always know what they want to buy before they walk into a store.

Hybrid shoppers evaluate your brand across channels, and if pricing, payment or stock differs between them, trust breaks. They care about three things: pricing consistency (26.3% want the same discounts online and in-store), payment flexibility (21.0% expect the same payment options everywhere) and unified inventory (19.4% are discouraged by limited in-store stock).

What to do in Kuwait: align your channels. Show the same prices, run the same offers, accept the same payment methods, and surface real stock both online and in store. The winning brands enable buy-online-pickup-in-store and ship-from-store for out-of-stock items — they remove friction between channels rather than treating online and offline as two separate businesses.

When asked what makes them return to the same brand, 61.0% said product quality — but it's not enough on its own. Right behind it: promotions or offers (50.5%), ease of payment (32.5%) and delivery speed (26.6%). For nearly 40% of shoppers, quality isn't the deciding factor; they come back for convenience.

On online perks specifically, shoppers value discounts (60.4%) and free shipping (57.0%) most, but flexible payments (42.6%) and next-day delivery (31.1%) are what create differentiation. As the report puts it: loyalty is built by removing reasons to reconsider, while convenience seals the deal.

What to do in Kuwait: don't compete on product alone. Pair a strong product with operational excellence — competitive pricing, multiple fast payment options, reliable delivery, and a fast, intuitive website. Then map your customer journey and find the exact moments where customers hesitate or drop off, and remove the friction there.

This is the headline finding for any retailer. 69.9% of shoppers say they would avoid a retailer that doesn't offer flexible payment options like Tabby — nearly 7 in 10. Only 10.7% said it wouldn't matter. Flexible payments aren't a niche feature anymore; their absence is a reason to leave.

The scale backs it up: around 60–65% of adults in Saudi Arabia and the UAE have registered with Tabby, and 1 in 4 adults made a purchase with it in the last 12 months. Crucially, flexible payments cut across every income level — they're a preference for choice, timing and control, not a proxy for financial stress. Middle-income shoppers are the largest active group, but lower and higher-income shoppers are well represented too.

When buying in-store, shoppers ranked their priorities as speed (31.5%), security (23.3%), flexibility (18.0%) and rewards (17.2%). What makes shoppers trust an online checkout is secure payment options (24.2%), a well-known brand (22.7%) and customer reviews (18.9%).

What to do in Kuwait: offer Buy Now Pay Later (Tabby and Tamara are both live in Kuwait) alongside KNET, cards and Apple Pay, and make these options visible before the moment of payment — not buried at the final step. The same expectation applies in-store: 21.0% want the same payment options offline as online. If your checkout falls short on speed, trust or flexibility, conversion suffers.

The biggest frustrations when buying online aren't technical — they're informational. The top complaints: unclear product descriptions (18.5%), high shipping costs (17.7%), out-of-stock items (15.7%), lack of trust in the website (12.7%) and unclear returns policy (10.8%). A slow website ranks last at 6.8%.

Cart abandonment follows the same pattern. Shoppers abandon because they found a better deal elsewhere (17.6%), shipping costs (17.0%), hidden fees or additional costs (16.2%) and slow delivery times (12.6%). In other words, most conversion losses happen before checkout, when pricing, policies or availability lack clarity.

The good news from Tabby's own conclusion: major redesigns are rarely required. Clarity outperforms complexity. Display the total cost — shipping, fees and taxes — before checkout, write clear and complete product descriptions, feature authentic reviews, make returns policies visible, and show real-time stock. These are mostly low-effort, high-impact fixes.

What to do in Kuwait: audit your store for the high-intent, low-effort wins first. Surface total delivery cost early, kill hidden fees, and make trust signals (secure payment badges, reviews, clear return terms) obvious. Clarity is one of the highest-return investments you can make.

AI adoption is rising fast. 42.8% of shoppers used AI to help make a shopping decision in the last 12 months, climbing to 47.8% in the UAE and 51.8% among 18–29 year olds. Usage drops with age, falling to 30.2% among those 50+.

But trust lags behind usage. Only 30.0% trust AI to recommend products, though another 43.4% say "maybe" — almost half are ready to be persuaded. And 68.4% agree they'd like a more personalised, efficient shopping experience even if AI is used. The catch: shoppers want AI to assist, not replace, their decisions. Trust drops when AI makes autonomous purchasing decisions, hides how prices or availability are set, or recommends without clear reasoning.

What to do in Kuwait: use AI for size recommendations based on past purchases, side-by-side comparison tools and fast search and discovery — the assistive use cases shoppers actually want. Design for transparency (show why something is recommended), give shoppers control (let them opt out), and frame AI as a helpful assistant, not a replacement for their judgment.

Heading into 2026, sentiment is split but cautiously optimistic: 51.5% are financially confident, 27.9% neutral and 20.5% lack confidence. Confidence is higher in the UAE than in Saudi Arabia across most age groups, and it generally strengthens with income — though in Saudi Arabia the pattern is flatter, with caution present even at higher income tiers.

Why it matters: financial confidence directly influences whether shoppers trade up, hunt for deals, delay purchases or hold back. What's consistent across every income level and age group is the desire for financial control. Flexibility and choice have become mainstream expectations — which loops straight back to why nearly 70% would avoid retailers without flexible payments.

What to do in Kuwait: for cautious segments, reduce perceived risk — be explicit on pricing, value and policies, and avoid surprises. For confident segments, highlight premium options and make it easy to trade up. Give every shopper the financial control they now expect through flexible, transparent payment and clear value.

Tabby's overall takeaway is that Middle East shoppers won't trade convenience for quality, or speed for security — they expect both, consistently, across every touchpoint. The biggest opportunity is to optimise for all shoppers across all channels by removing friction, building trust and delivering consistent excellence.

For a Kuwaiti brand, that translates into a clear checklist: make discovery digital-first, align online and in-store experiences, pair quality with convenience, offer flexible payments like Tabby and Tamara visibly, strip out friction with clear pricing and product detail, use AI transparently, and design for financial control. None of these require a teardown — most are clarity and consistency fixes you can ship this quarter.

This is exactly the work we do at Aahfil: building and optimising Shopify stores, fixing the conversion leaks that quietly cost you sales, and running performance marketing that turns digital-first discovery into revenue. If you want a store that meets the 2026 standard Gulf shoppers now demand, let's talk.