Secondary Research
Research based on published reports
Working: 8.00am - 5.00pm
Working: 8.00am - 5.00pm
Olmec Consulting delivers data-driven market research that enables confident investment and strategic decision-making. Our studies combine demographic analysis, demand–supply assessment, consumer behavior insights, and competitive benchmarking. We support investors, developers, and operators across sectors including education, healthcare, real estate, and retail. Using primary surveys and robust secondary data, we identify market gaps, pricing opportunities, and growth potential. Our insights are practical, location-specific, and aligned with regulatory and market realities. The outcome is clear, actionable intelligence that reduces risk and enhances returns.
Intrinsically coordinate multifunctional solutions reliable potentialities. Objectively envisioneer high in convergence through collaborative networks. Interactively generate B2C e-tailers for business data restore fully researched relationships through resource maximizing results.
Deliver practical insights backed by reliable data and local context.
Deliver practical insights backed by reliable data and local context.
Senior Professionals with Consulting expertise
A plug-and-play model supported by external domain experts when needed.
Identifying Customer Needs: Market research helps businesses understand their customers' needs and preferences. By gathering information about customer demographics, purchasing behavior, and feedback on products and services, companies can tailor their offerings to better meet customer needs.
Evaluating Market Opportunities: Market research helps businesses identify new market opportunities and evaluate the potential demand for new products or services. It also helps assess existing competition.
Making Informed Decisions: Market research provides businesses with valuable data to inform their decision-making. This includes insights into customer behavior, competitor strategies, and industry trends, which can all influence business strategy and operations.
Improving Marketing Effectiveness: Market research can help businesses develop more effective marketing strategies. By understanding customer needs and preferences, companies can create targeted marketing campaigns that resonate with their target audience.
Before designing or launching a new Product/service: Market research is conducted before/after designing a new product or service. This helps businesses understand customer needs and preferences and evaluate the potential acceptability of the product. It is normally done as part of the feasibility Study or business planning process , Here the
Clients typically want to understand customers’ buying behaviour, choices, and existing purchasing preferences.
This helps clarify the competitive landscape.
A market survey is done and a market report is provided.
A client may design the product or service and may want to validate its acceptance before hitting the market.
Market research is also conducted after a product is designed to evaluate its potential acceptability, affordability, and identify areas for improvement. This can fine tune the product/service development as per market expectation and also help develop marketing strategies.
If the client who is developing the product of service is aware of the customer preferences, such market study or market research is conducted after the product/service is designed
to understand at what price the customer would buy.
To understand the potential market size, which supports the financial analysis.
To Understand an Industry or sector : When a company wants to enter a new market as part of the market entry strategy such a market study is done. It helps identify the competition, the positioning of the new product, the channel through which the existing products are being sold
where the business is planning on backward or forward integration or looking at
acquiring strategically synergistic business. A market study may also be conducted as part of a valuation of an existing business. A market study is done and a market report is provided.
Customer Satisfaction Survey: Market research can also be conducted on an ongoing basis to monitor customer satisfaction upon using the product. This helps monitor customer satisfaction with the product /service and help improve the offering.
This is typically done for B2C products or services.
Research based on published reports
Written by
Dr Rita Younus — Market Research & University Consultant, Olmec Consulting
Last updated: April 2025
Market research in Dubai is a structured process of gathering and analysing data on consumer behaviour, market demand, competitive positioning, and sector dynamics to support investment decisions and business strategy in the UAE. Whether you are entering a new market, launching a new product, or evaluating a site or sector, a well-designed research programme replaces assumption with evidence — and evidence is what separates confident investment decisions from expensive mistakes.
Olmec Consulting has delivered market research projects across the UAE since 2011, working across sectors including food and beverage, real estate, healthcare, education, energy, hospitality, and manufacturing. Our research is always primary — conducted in the UAE market, specific to your target audience and location — not a recycled secondary data report dressed up as field research.
Effective market research for a UAE investment decision goes beyond sourcing publicly available industry reports. The UAE market has a structure — demographic composition, consumer behaviour patterns, competitive density, regulatory frameworks — that differs materially from most home markets and that changes faster than most published data reflects. Research that relies primarily on secondary data will consistently misrepresent demand, understate competition, and miss the pricing and positioning gaps that represent real opportunity.
A credible UAE market study should include a demand assessment specific to the target location, customer segment, and price point — not a national market share figure applied generically. It should include a competitive landscape analysis based on actual observation and data collection, not a list of competitors scraped from Google Maps. And it should include primary data from the target audience themselves — whether through structured surveys, focus group discussions, or in-depth interviews — because the gap between what consumers say they want and what the secondary data implies is often where the most important investment insights live.
Qualitative research — focus group discussions, in-depth interviews, ethnographic observation — explores motivations, attitudes, and behaviours in depth. It answers why consumers behave the way they do, what they value, and what would change their decisions. In the UAE's multicultural market, where consumer behaviour varies significantly across nationality groups, income levels, and communities, qualitative research is particularly valuable for revealing the nuances that aggregate data misses.
Quantitative research — structured surveys, demand sampling, statistical modelling — measures and counts at scale. It answers how many consumers prefer a given option, how much they are willing to pay, and how their preferences distribute across segments. Quantitative data gives investors the confidence to make scale decisions — it converts qualitative insight into something a financial model can use.
For most UAE market research projects, we recommend a mixed-method approach: qualitative first to understand the landscape and generate hypotheses, quantitative to validate those hypotheses at scale. This sequencing is not dogmatic — the right methodology depends on the specific question being answered and the decision it needs to support.
Our market research engagements span the full breadth of commercial activity in the UAE. In food and beverage, we have conducted competitive benchmarking research across Dubai's café and restaurant segments — visiting competitor locations, conducting primary customer interviews, and building demand models that reflect realistic footfall and revenue potential rather than industry averages. In real estate, we have designed and executed tenant satisfaction surveys and ownership aspiration studies for landlords and developers seeking to optimise asset performance. In energy, we have built multi-year demand forecasting models combining secondary data analysis with expert interviews to support infrastructure investment decisions.
In education, we have conducted school and nursery demand assessments across Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and Sharjah — analysing catchment demographics, competitor fee structures, and curriculum positioning gaps. In healthcare and wellness, we have assessed patient and consumer demand for new clinic and wellness concepts in a sector where DHA and regulatory requirements, competitive concentration, and consumer price sensitivity create a complex investment environment. Each sector carries its own research design requirements — and our methodology is calibrated to the sector, not applied generically.
Market research in the UAE is commissioned for a wide range of investment and strategic decisions. The most common use cases we encounter are: validating demand before a feasibility study or business plan is commissioned; understanding competitor positioning before a market entry or product launch; measuring customer satisfaction or tenant retention to support asset enhancement decisions; and building demand forecasts to support infrastructure investment or supply planning.
In each case, the value of well-executed market research is not the report itself — it is the confidence it gives an investor or decision-maker to proceed with conviction, or to redirect capital before a costly commitment is made. The cost of a market research project is always a fraction of the cost of a decision made without one.
Questions investors and business owners ask us before commissioning market research in the UAE.
A selection of completed market research and consumer research engagements across sectors in the UAE.
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