How an overseas brand earns customers' trust in the UAE

If you run a business outside the UAE and plan to sell here, you will find customers who are willing to trust you and competitors who offer something very close to what you offer. When that happens, the customer chooses the business they trust.

I have worked in Dubai since 2003, at Al Tayer Group, Emaar and IFZA among others. Much of that time went on bringing overseas brands into this market, or on winning the business of companies that were arriving.

85% of people in the UAE trust brands

Edelman surveyed about 1,200 people in each of 15 markets between 23 April and 11 May 2026.

The UAE had the highest score of the 15 markets for trust in brands. In the second and third rows a lower number means more trust, and the UAE was the lowest on both.

Customers in the UAE are more open to a new brand than customers in the UK. People here are willing to try something new. In my experience, a business that has its positioning right and approaches the market in the right way finds customers ready to listen from the start.

One caution on the figures. Some markets give higher scores on almost every survey question, so the gap between countries may be smaller than the table suggests. The order of the countries is more reliable than the size of the gap.

UAE customers expect more from a brand than UK customers do

Edelman also asked what makes a brand relevant to a person, and grouped the answers into five kinds.

Every score in the UAE is between 82% and 90%. In the UK only the first is above 70%.

A UK campaign that only explains what the product does meets one of these five expectations. Customers in the UAE give their trust early, and in my experience they notice quickly when a brand has made no effort for them in particular.

84% say it matters that a brand is based in the UAE

In the same survey, 84% of UAE respondents said it was important, or a deal breaker, that a brand is headquartered in their country. That is the highest of the 15 markets and 18 points higher than in 2023. In the UK the figure is 55%.

This figure needs care. Most people living in the UAE come from another country, and Edelman does not say whether they answered about the UAE or about their home country.

An overseas brand can still win recommendation here. YouGov ranks brands in the UAE by the share of their own customers who would recommend them. In its 2024 ranking Emirates was first and Emaar third. The other eight in the top ten were international, among them iPhone, Nike and Singapore Airlines.

Two of the largest companies in the world chose to enter through a brand founded here. Amazon bought Souq in 2017 and relaunched it as Amazon.ae in 2019. Uber completed its purchase of Careem in January 2020 for USD 3.1 billion, which is about AED 11.4 billion at the fixed rate of 3.6725, and kept the Careem name. Four months later it passed its Uber Eats business in the UAE to Careem.

Most businesses cannot buy a local company, so the next two sections cover what they can do.

What I saw work for overseas brands in retail

At Al Tayer Group I worked on the launch of Bloomingdale's at The Dubai Mall, its first store outside the United States, and I led the opening event. The launch was planned as the brand's entry to a new market, with all the local work that involves, and it kept what customers already knew Bloomingdale's for.

Almost every major luxury brand has a presence in the UAE market, so even the best known names compete for the same customers. Many of the brands that grow here use glocalisation. They adapt their products, design or customer experience to the local market and keep their global identity, and it has worked well with residents and with tourists. In luxury that means capsule collections made for the region, private events for individual clients, and pieces created with local artists and designers, which marketers call cultural co-creation.

The largest brands still do this every year. For Ramadan 2025 Tom Ford released its first Ramadan capsule, seven looks with bags and shoes, sold only in the Gulf. Fendi's Noor capsule reworked the brand's signature style for its clients in the Middle East, and Lancôme created a Ramadan limited edition with the Emirati artist Huda Al Nuaimi. In April 2025 adidas Originals launched its Loomhood trainers in Dubai, Riyadh and Cairo, made with a craftsperson from each city. In Dubai that was Dream Girl Tailors, a family-run tailoring shop in Al Fahidi.

In November 2018 Dolce & Gabbana held its first fashion show in the Middle East at Fashion Avenue in The Dubai Mall, with more than 120 models and looks made for Dubai. I was Group Director of Marketing and Events at Emaar. I led the venue side and supported the delivery of the show.

A brand of that size chose to make part of its show for this city. A smaller business can do the same on a smaller budget.

What I saw work in business set-up

The UAE has more than 40 free zones, according to the Ministry of Economy. In 2025 three of them registered about 24,000 new companies between them. RAKEZ registered about 19,000, DIFC 2,525 and DMCC more than 2,300.

Free zones differ in the kinds of business they attract. Jebel Ali Free Zone is known for logistics and shipping, for example, and others for commodities, finance or technology. Their core service is the administrative work of setting up a company, and on that they are similar. A business owner abroad who compares them online sees much the same offer from each.

For the owner this is a significant decision. The free zone becomes the legal base of their company in the UAE, and they depend on it for the licence, the visas and much of the early set-up. They need to be confident that it has the knowledge, the expertise and the standing to deliver that part of their entry to the market.

I was Director of Marketing at IFZA. In my experience, owners made their decision on what they could see of a free zone beyond its own description of itself. They looked at six things.

• The kinds of company it was already licensing, and how large that community was.
• Its connections with associations, embassies and business groups, and the partnerships it had built locally with international brands.
• Whether it was an authority in its field, with people whose knowledge helped develop the market through research, guidance and speaking at conferences and exhibitions.
• What it did beyond its core business, such as support for local communities and charitable work.
• Whether it sponsored events and invested in its brand.
• What third parties said about it, in independent reviews, in the press and in recommendations from other business owners. By the time I left IFZA in 2025, its review programme had brought in about 2,500 Google reviews with an average rating of 4.9.

Edelman's figures support this. Asked what has the biggest effect on whether they trust a brand, 41% of people chose what others who are not paid by the brand say about it. What the brand says about itself came second at 20%. In PwC's 2024 survey, 82% of consumers in the Middle East said they look for reviews before buying from a seller on social media.

This is the silent work that goes on in the background, and many businesses do not give it much effort, energy or money. At IFZA these activities formed part of the overall marketing strategy. Building that expertise and those connections was really important.

What overseas businesses underestimate

These are the four points I raise most often with a business that is new to the UAE.

The size of the opportunity, locally and across the region

The UAE has about 11.3 million residents from more than 200 nationalities. That figure tells an overseas business very little about how many people will buy its product. The real size of the opportunity depends on who the customers are, where they live and where they choose to buy, and for many businesses it reaches well beyond the UAE.

I brought Pronovias, the Spanish bridal brand, into the Middle East, and it was sold in two stores I owned and operated in the UAE. By the number of dresses sold and their value, the Dubai store became one of the brand's top-performing stores in the world. I identified the core audience types for bridal wear, segmented them, and built marketing strategies and outreach programmes to reach each one. Many of the brides who bought from the store travelled from other countries in the Middle East and North Africa.

Dubai Economy and Tourism describes Dubai as a base for reaching more than 2.4 billion consumers across the Middle East, Africa, the Indian subcontinent and the CIS. A business that measures its market only within the UAE's borders may overlook customers in Saudi Arabia, Egypt or India who would travel to Dubai or buy from a company based here.

How fast customers expect you to deliver

Customers here, of every nationality, expect a high standard of service and fast delivery. In the UK a customer may order a sofa and accept a wait of several weeks. In Dubai the same customer expects it within days. For a business selling products, that means holding enough stock in the country. For a business selling services or software, it means having experts on the ground and planning a much shorter path from first meeting to signed contract to delivery than it would at home.

These expectations come from the way the country itself operates. The UAE makes decisions quickly and adopts new technology early. In October 2017 it became the first country in the world to appoint a minister for artificial intelligence, and in 2026 IMD ranked it fifth in the world for competitiveness. Customers judge new suppliers against that standard, and a business that works to its home market's timelines will lose clients to competitors that move faster.

How much depends on relationships

In my experience, a new business here wins almost all of its first customers through meetings and introductions it arranged itself. Hospitality is central to business culture in the UAE, and a first meeting is often spent building a relationship before any business is discussed. Each nationality and community also expects a different approach, so a business needs to understand the culture of each client group it wants to win. Sales rarely come in the first months, so start building the network before you open.

How much buying sits with a few large groups

Many of the brands in the UAE are run by a small number of family-owned groups. Al Tayer Group, where I worked, represents more than 80 brands. Al-Futtaim has been a family business for more than 90 years and employs more than 40,000 people in more than 20 countries. Ten names on your list of potential clients may sit under two or three group companies, so missing those groups can remove a large share of your potential clients. Each group has its own structure, decision makers and way of buying. Reaching them takes research first, then a go-to-market strategy that sets out how you will approach each one.

Five places to start

1. Segment your audiences and build the strategy before you arrive. Start with the make-up of the population in the places you plan to sell, then go further. Nationality, age and gender are only the first layer. In Edelman's survey, 88% of UAE respondents said a brand is relevant when it reflects their values, culture and background, and 86% when it connects them with people who share their interests. Segment your audiences by the communities they belong to, the values they hold and the way they buy, and include Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the rest of the region wherever your product can reach.

   This is the work I do with clients. From the segmentation I define the core audiences, write the proposition and a message for each one, and plan the channels and outreach programme that will reach every segment. It needs to be done months before you arrive, because changing the positioning after launch is slower and more expensive.

2. Enter through a reseller or a local partner first. An established local partner brings the connections, relationships and market knowledge that take years to build, and you can agree terms with them before you arrive. This lets you test demand and build the brand at lower risk. Once the business has the scale to stand alone, you can set up your own company and change your structure. A free zone is often the right place to establish it.

3. Take an active part in business groups. Membership of a business council or association brings little on its own. Speak at their events, aim to join the board, send them regular news about your business, and go to their networking breakfasts. Many business councils run golf days, and if you play, these are a good place to meet people. Contact embassies and groups that work between your country and the UAE. If you can, exhibit at a trade show here before you open. Done properly, networking across these groups is close to a full-time job.

4. Reach customers through more than advertising. In my experience newspapers and magazines reach fewer of your customers than they did, and customers are spread across many smaller channels. Depending on your product or service, consider a promotion in a mall. The Dubai Mall had 111 million visitors in 2024. Look at sponsoring local sports teams and community groups, and at partnerships or collaborations with local brands. Someone with local knowledge knows where your customers live, work and spend their time, and how to reach them there.

5. Plan how you will reach the large groups. List the group companies behind the brands you want as clients. For each one, decide who to speak to, how to position your business for them and who could introduce you. Government bodies and the largest groups are only part of the market, so include medium-sized companies in your list.

Sources. Edelman, 2026 Trust Barometer Special Report, Brand Growth in an Insular World, for all trust and relevance figures. It covered 15 markets and 17,688 respondents, about 1,200 in each market, online, from 23 April to 11 May 2026. Some markets give higher scores on most survey questions, so compare the order of countries more than the gaps between them. YouGov, Recommend Rankings 2024 for the UAE, covering 1 June 2023 to 31 May 2024 and published in July 2024, for the most recommended brands. PwC, Voice of the Consumer 2024, Middle East findings, October 2024, for the 82% figure. The page does not state which countries or how many people were surveyed. UAE Ministry of Economy, 40 free zones for company incorporation, for the number of free zones. RAKEZ, DIFC and DMCC annual results for 2025, for new company registrations. Amazon, Souq becomes Amazon.ae in the UAE, May 2019. Uber, Uber completes acquisition of Careem, January 2020. Gulf News, 5 November 2018, for the Dolce & Gabbana show in Dubai. The National, 9 February 2025, for the Ramadan 2025 capsule collections of Tom Ford and Fendi. Jing Daily, 9 February 2026, for the Lancôme collaboration with Huda Al Nuaimi. Campaign Middle East, 16 April 2025, for the adidas Originals Loomhood collection. UAE Federal Competitiveness and Statistics Centre, population estimates for 2024, as published by Gulf Labour Markets and Migration, for the population and the number of men and women. Abu Dhabi Residents Office, for more than 200 nationalities. Dubai Economy and Tourism, Why Dubai, accessed October 2026, for the 2.4 billion consumers. Airports Council International, preliminary 2025 ranking, for Dubai International passengers. IMD World Competitiveness Ranking, June 2026. Emaar, full-year results for 2024, February 2025, for visitors to The Dubai Mall. Al Tayer Group and Al-Futtaim websites, October 2026, for their brands, employees and countries. The dollar figure is converted at the fixed rate of AED 3.6725. The IFZA review figures, the Pronovias stores and my roles at Al Tayer Group, Emaar and IFZA are from my own records.