When I first arrived to Riyadh, I thought it peculiar how shops were arranged. You'll find shops selling a certain commodity all grouped together. For example, there's a cellphone souk (Arabic for market) with dozens of stores, all selling the same models of phones. Same for the computer souk, gold souk, car souk, and so on.
I found it very odd at first because back in the US, retailers don't open their shops right next to the competition. That simply doesn't make business sense.
American entrepreneurs scout out a location to ensure they are one of the few selling their wares in the vicinity. After all, if I'm selling cellphones, my business would obviously do better if I'm the only seller in the area.
And so, when I first saw stores lined up, one after the other, all selling the same items, I was seriously confused. How do they ever make money? Why not relocate to another place, away from the competition?
And then after settling down, I realized how convenient these souks are for the consumer. Instead of driving all over Riyadh looking for the store that sells what I want, I simply go to the souk and shop around. No hassle of driving from one end of town to the other. Everything is available within walking distance.
I now am perplexed how shoppers in the West survive, having to drive long distances, going from store to store to find what they need.
The convenience here is amazing. And the vendor of item X realizes that his chances of making a sale are increased when he's located in the X souk as opposed to a location where he is the only one selling item X.
Some of you may be thinking, 'Big deal, we have shopping malls in the West', but the two are actually quite different.
The souks I'm referring to are more analogous to a strip plaza with twenty clothing stores, all selling the very similar, if not the exact, style of clothing, from the same manufacturer or supplier, with differences in sizes and colors available in each store's stock.
If you want your car fixed, there's a designated area with dozens of mechanics and auto-repair shops. You want to buy a satellite dish, you'll find a strip of 15 shops, all selling the same variety of dishes. If you want plants for your garden, there are flower markets consisting of large stalls, all attached to each other, all selling the same flowers with slight differences in the variety offered.
And this mentality has even spilled onto the streets. When a Saudi parks on the side of the road to sell watermelon or dates out the back of his truck, it's only a matter of time before five others do the same.
If the same thing were to occur in the US, the original vendor would bark at the others to go find their own turf.
I would like to think that these Muslim sellers embody the divine principle of tawakul (trust in Allah) and acknowledge that their rizq (sustenance) is pre-determined by Allah, so no matter if they were the only one in the area or one of several hundreds, their lot is fixed.
But I'm too cynical to think so positively of these folks.
Truth is, these rascals probably collude with each other to set the prices. And being so close only facilitates their conspiring.
Oh well, at least it beats having to drive around town.
WAW
2 days ago
13 comments:
The idea of not having similar stores next to or near your own (the American ideal) is seriously out of touch, IMO. I've come across the phenomenon you described in both Korea and Singapore. In Korea, near my place of work, there was a stretch of underground shops (about a mile long) where there was almost nothing but women's clothing stores, each about the size of a shoebox (or so it seemed), perhaps 200 of them within a 10-minute walk. Talk about competition! And when one closed down, as they inevitably did, another one would take its place. There were some other shops catering to different customers (e.g., men's clothing), but the vast majority of them all sold the same merchandise. Singapore has two malls that are devoted to high-tech equipment; one of them in particular, Sim Lim Square, has seven floors or so of almost nothing but computer shops. In many respects it's great to have all those stores together, competing against each other. Not only because they create lower prices and are convenient to comparison shop, but because they've got everything you can possibly imagine available, all under one roof. Everyone here knows that the place to buy a computer is at Sim Lim Square.
Not to mention when you dont agree with one stores prices...they quickly bring it down when you make moves to leave and enter the shop next door....hardly have to haggle in these instances...they know if you dont buy from them...the competition will most likely get your business.
this is very common here in India too.
Interesting, on the flip side, I wonder if separating stores actually makes retailers provide better service. If ya think about it, your customers made a special trip just to see you. As opposed to the souk, where they came for the whole group (souk), and not *you* persay.
Since I have a store, I also can't stand bartering. Maybe I'm too westernized. We adopt the 'wal-mart' model, "every day low prices," that way we don't have
to duel w/ customers over price, or have customers more willing to fight & bite get better deals than laid back people.
Tho US probably has the best customer service in the entire world overall ... easily beating UK, France, Italy, etc.
Tho US probably has the best customer service in the entire world overall ...
No way! Not even close. Korean and Japanese customer service is miles ahead of American customer service.
AA- All,
@JD, you mentioned woman's clothing and computer as two examples in Korea and Singapore. But do you see this massive convergence of similar stores in other areas as well?
As I mentioned in the post, here in KSA they have markets for plants, vegetables, furniture, cars, fish, clothing, etc. You name it.
Is it the same in places you've been to?
@CoolRed, you know, I used to think the same. But then when I saw how some of them just smiled at me as I left their store to go to a neighboring competition, I realized that these guys obviously know the prices in the market.
I saw how they all know each other and even will get items from each other, when their stock is low.
And then there's the fact that many workers in the store have no real care for the wellbeing of the business. They get paid peanuts, so the quality of service reflects that...
@Adnan, "If ya think about it, your customers made a special trip just to see you."
Yeah, but what if you don't have what they need? The inconvenience of driving around to bookstores located so far from each other is too much.
Speaking of bartering, I agree. Many times I'm in no mood to haggle, but I know that if I pay the asking price, I'm getting ripped off - cause the seller has initially set the price high so as to leave room for the inevitable haggling that customers do. It really sucks!
"Tho US probably has the best customer service in the entire world overall ... easily beating UK, France, Italy, etc."
And what exactly are you basing this on?
Yeah I definitely prefer the whole souq concept we have in KSA :)
I guess if one wanted to open a new business in KSA, they'd be better off with ten small-side-by-side-outlets instead of a similar sized supermarket! Wait a sec, is this an old idea ;)
Truth is, these rascals probably collude with each other to set the prices. And being so close only facilitates their conspiring. that's what I found in Dubai.
to tell you the truth, even in Canada this happens. If you want to buy a TV for example, there's only a few big outlets all over town, and for SOME reason the prices are very similar. Here people live on "specials".
But do you see this massive convergence of similar stores in other areas as well? ... Is it the same in places you've been to?
Yes and no; it depends on the product. For the most part, Singapore doesn't have a lot of concentrated shopping except for certain products. Sim Lim Square (and, to a lesser degree, Sim Lim Tower across the street and Funan Mall) for computers; also, there's this one building in the Eunos neighborhood that's about 10 stories tall with maybe 30-40 different car dealers in it (those sales people were hungry). And then there are the wet markets and hawker centers that have dozens of tiny shops selling unprocessed food (e.g., fish) and meals, respectively. But most shopping centers and malls here are very similar to American malls (boring). What strikes me as odd, though, is that certain companies, primarily fast food restaurants and stores like 7-Eleven, will place units very close to each other. As in within 100-200 meters of each other. American managers would freak at the "cannibalization," but I think it's due to the dense foot traffic we have in some places.
Korea wasn't as concentrated with markets focusing on one particular product, except for the women's clothing example I gave earlier, but they were different in other ways. For example, Koreans are hyper-competitive. Far more competitive than anyone else I've seen. (Americans are incredibly lazy slackers compared with Koreans. This is one of the reasons why the customer service is so good there, as I brought up earlier; they have to provide excellent service just to be keep up with their rivals. Not providing superior customer service at cheap, cheap prices means going out of business.)
What was common to see in Korea was certain neighborhoods (eg: Seomyeon and Nampodong, both in Busan, where I lived) where you could find hundreds, if not thousands of shops selling just about anything (products and services) within a square kilometer or two (and that doesn't count all the street vendors). And so you could go to these neighborhoods and do all your shopping there. Not everyone in the same business is located next to each other, but the areas are concentrated enough that you can walk for 60-90 minutes and be able to see almost every shop. Fun experiences, those.
There were some other oddities about Korean shopping and competitiveness, but I'll save those stories for another time, insha'allah. ;)
SOOOO...the cat is out of the bag...is this how you really bought my dates?
Naeem!! Salaams. I so enjoyed your company. I'm only saddened by the fact that we couldn't spend more time together. I pray I can come and visit you and Naeem soon. I will definitely add you to the blog roll. May Allah increase you in your deen and iman.
Salaams.
P.S. I finally did some bartering and I think I did ok!!
AA- Marc,
So glad to see that you returned safely. The pleasure meeting you was all mine!
Looking forward to your posts and pics on the Madina trip (except of course the pics from the ziyara that you slept through...LOL!)
BTW, the Chittick book is amazing so far!!!!
May Allah bless you and your efforts!
Post a Comment