‘harman house’, the leading retail chain in home, professional and car infotainment in the Middle East, has announced that the success of this year’s edition of the Dubai Shopping Festival (DSF), the UAE’s largest annual shopping event, has helped drive in a 42 per cent increase in their sales as compared to last year’s figures during the same period. Dubai is a vibrant and buoyant market for the consumer electronics segment, which is consolidated by a strong local consumer market and high spending of tourists coming from China, India, Russia and Africa. According to the company’s senior executives, this year’s DSF saw local consumers and tourists purchasing electronic products like flat-panel TVs, home entertainment systems and other electronics from Dubai, owing to the significant price differential.

Products that were in large demand included flat screen TV sets, which showed a sales growth of 35 per cent, followed by audio products, tablets and smartphones. Aside from the price differential of products during DSF, the company’s strategic investments in advertising and communications played a key role in attracting more sales. In fact, ‘harman house’ lists campaigns like ‘Hear the Truth’ that featured leading pop artists like Maroon 5 and AR Rahman and the ‘Beautiful Sound’ campaign with Jennifer Lopez was instrumental in setting the base for driving in more sales during the festival and putting the company on track towards achieving a target revenue of USD 300 million for Fiscal Year 2011-2012.

“DSF continues to be a strategic platform for us to widely market and promote our broad portfolio of home, professional and car infotainment products across the UAE, which has helped key in a 42 per cent increase in sales,” said Amit Malani, President, Harman Middle East. “Despite starting earlier than usual, DSF enjoyed high consumer activity, buying high end consumer electronics like flat panel TVs, audio systems, tablets and smartphones. This year we offered a 10 to 40 per cent value back to customers, which is unheard of in today’s electronics market. We have no competition in our audio range and are in a position to offer the best value added offering for high quality home cinema and entertainment systems in the market.”