Why is Majid Al Futtaim trawling Silicon Valley?

> FROM PAGE 23 “If you look at companies like Alibaba and Amazon, a key reason for their success is their ability to analyse the data of customers, products and logistical supply chains.”

The strategy is already bearing fruit for Majid Al Futtaim, which has 7.5 million uniquely identified customers in the UAE alone.

In its Carrefour stores it had crunched data relating to its biscuit assortments. “We discovered a number of counterintuitive insights, that when we implemented them they had a very big impact on productivity,” Bejjani said.

“We even discovered that there was one specific biscuit brand that actually had a big impact of people walking out of the store if they don’t find [that brand].” Yet with companies ramping up the amount of data they collect there could be concerns about privacy. “In the UAE, the government leadership is beefing up its data governance programme, but it’s not quite there yet,” Xiao said. “It’s very important to protect the data and ensure individual privacy is protected. Companies will have to put proper data handling policies in place too, to ensure anonymity.”

Majid Al Futtaim is owner and operator of 21 shopping malls in the region and has exclusive rights to the Carrefour franchise in 38 markets in the Middle East, Africa and Asia, according to its website. The company plans to take Carrefour in the UAE online by mid2018, and across its other territories in the next 24 months, Bejjani said. — Reuters