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Seven out of 10 UAE residents aged 18-40 are happy to take advice online, before making a purchase, a study said on Tuesday.
BPG Cohn & Wolfe, the PR wing of BPG Group collaborated with YouGov, a market research agency to study the impact of influencers on the residents of UAE.
Using YouGov's Omnibus online research service, the research agency interviewed 1,008 UAE residents aged 18 to 40, representing the online adult population in the Gulf state.
As per the study, respondents showed high affinity to food, fashion & beauty and were likely to turn to social media influencers for recommendations. Seventy-one percent of the respondents said they were happy to take advice online, before making a purchase.

Food
About 68% from the panel felt their dining decision is being influenced by social foodies. Apart from following chefs like Manal Alalem, Osama Gordon Ramsay and Sanjeev Kapoor, social foodies — Foodiva and Food Sheikh were among the top influencers. The study also highlighted that Zomato played a major role in determining the consumer's dining decision on what is the hottest new restaurant or dish to try!
53% people follow food influencers.
70% of the respondents use smartphone to follow food influencers and the platforms that stood out were — Facebook, Youtube & Instagram.

Fashion & Beauty
Sixty-three percent of the respondents felt their purchasing decision is influenced by Fashion & Beauty influencers. Huda Kattan (@hudabeauty) topped the list, followed by TV celebs — Joelle Mardinian, Ola Alfares, Amina Shelbaya & Lojain Omran and bloggers Nadya Hasan from The Fierce Diaries and Fouz Alfahad (@TheRealFouz).
44% people follow Fashion & Beauty influencers.
A whopping 77% use smartphones to follow their Fashion and Beauty influencers and the platforms that secured the top positions were — Facebook, Instagram & Youtube.

Key Highlights
Across both categories, two insights can be a good learning for future influencers:
1. Most of the influencers are followed on their social profiles than on their website. Key learning is using social profiles as an extension of the content that sits on the website.
2. Major reasons of motivating individuals to follow influencers are style, personality and beautifully packaged content in the form of photographs.
As of now, there are over 200 fashion and beauty social media contacts and over 200 food contacts in the UAE who are classified as bloggers on CisionPoint, a web-based on-demand PR solution.