A new survey of Arab women aged between 20 and 40 has revealed unique insights into their web surfing habits and online engagement with brands.

The survey, carried out on females in the UAE and Saudi Arabia by UK digital marketing firm Dentsu Aegis Network, found that two out of three Arab women go online to learn something new, while almost half go online to share advice and ideas.

The top four reasons that Arab women gave for going online was to learn things, to give ideas and advice, to be entertained and to keep up-to-date with news and gossip, respectively.  

In regards to shopping and brands, searches for fashion and beauty brands were the most popular, accounting for 62 percent of searches, followed by electronic brands (15 percent) and e-commerce platforms (8 percent).

The most popular social media platforms among Arab women were found to be Whatsapp (80 percent), Instagram (62 percent), YouTube (55 percent), Facebook (40 percent) and Twitter (30 percent).

Rana El Alami, Senior Insights Executive at Dentsu Aegis Network in the UAE warned brands against ‘over-promoting’ themselves.

“Consumers will really question the authenticity of a brand if they do overpromote, especially in luxury brands,” El Alami explained.