Luxury Consumer Behaviour in the GCC — Spirits & Occasions Research
The Challenge
One of the world's most complex luxury markets. One of the most culturally sensitive research briefs we've ever received.
A global premium spirits brand had Gulf ambitions — and a gap they couldn't close from the outside. The UAE is a market where alcohol exists legally, socially, and commercially, but where the human relationship with it is anything but uniform. For an expatriate professional entertaining clients at a Dubai hotel bar, a premium whisky signals cosmopolitan confidence. For a local Emirati consumer, the same bottle carries an entirely different set of meanings — private, nuanced, and rarely discussed with strangers.
The brand's question was straightforward on paper: how do high-net-worth consumers in the UAE navigate luxury occasions, social rituals, and brand perception around spirits? In practice, it was one of the most layered research challenges we'd faced. You can't understand a market like this from afar. And you certainly can't understand it from a standard research panel.
They needed real conversations — with real people. Including people who had very good reasons not to have them.
Our Approach
The recruitment challenge here wasn't logistical. It was cultural.
Recruiting expatriate high-net-worth participants — professionals, executives, long-term Dubai residents comfortable discussing alcohol in a research context — was achievable. Recruiting local Emirati and GCC national affluent consumers was a different matter entirely. This is a community where alcohol consumption, when it exists, is deeply private. There is no social media trail, no panel database, no shortcut. Trust has to be built before a conversation can even begin. Most research firms either skip this group entirely or replace them with proxies. We didn't.
Our local network of expert recruiters spent weeks building pathways into this community through personal referrals, cultural intermediaries, and careful relationship-building. Participation was voluntary, fully confidential, and structured around genuine comfort — not extraction. We were clear with every participant about what we were asking and why. Several declined. The ones who agreed gave us something genuinely rare: an honest window into a perspective that almost no research captures.
All sessions — both expatriate and local profiles — were conducted in premium hotel settings across Dubai. The environment mattered. A neutral, high-quality venue signalled respect and discretion, which was essential for local participants and expected by all of them. Bilingual moderators fluent in Arabic and English ran the one-on-one interview sessions, not just translating language but holding the cultural context that makes a conversation meaningful.
The Insight
Same market. Completely different relationships with luxury.
The expatriate and local high-net-worth profiles didn't just differ in their consumption habits — they inhabited different emotional worlds when it came to luxury spirits. For expatriate consumers, premium spirits were social currency: public, performative, and tied to occasions of visible success. Brand recognition mattered. The bottle on the table said something about who you were.
For local participants willing to engage, the picture was more layered. Alcohol, where it featured at all, existed in private settings, selected with extreme deliberateness. Brand prestige still played a role — but it operated quietly. Discretion was the luxury. Visibility was not a selling point; it was almost the opposite.
What connected both groups was the primacy of occasion over product. Spirits in this market are not bought casually. They are selected, sometimes gifted, sometimes displayed — and every choice carries social meaning that extends well beyond taste. The brand had been thinking about preference. The real question was about context, ritual, and trust.
The Impact
Insights you can't find in any database.
Local Emirati consumers who openly discuss alcohol consumption are, by definition, impossible to reach through conventional research channels. They don't exist in panels. They don't respond to surveys. Getting them into a room — in a setting where they feel safe enough to be honest — required months of groundwork, not weeks. The fact that we did it meant the brand received a view of this audience that its competitors simply don't have.
The findings directly shaped the brand's Gulf positioning and activation strategy. Not with a single message — but with a segmented approach that respected the genuine complexity of the market. Who you're speaking to, where, through what channel, and with what tone: all of it was informed by what real people told us, in settings where telling us something true felt possible.
The recruitment decision to pursue local profiles rather than replace them with easier alternatives made the difference between insight and assumption. In markets where research routinely ignores the hardest voices to reach, that choice is what makes findings worth acting on.
"We knew the Gulf was complex. This research showed us specifically how — and that made all the difference." — Senior Insights Manager, Global Beverages
Ready to research a sensitive market?
If your next study involves audiences who are hard to reach, culturally nuanced, or simply not in any panel — that's exactly where we do our best work. One project lead. Genuine local expertise. Human insights built on trust, not shortcuts.
Questions About This Study
Can you recruit participants who would normally never agree to take part in research?
Sometimes, yes — but it depends on the approach. In culturally sensitive markets, access isn't a logistics problem, it's a trust problem. Our local recruiters build relationships through personal referrals and community networks rather than databases or cold outreach. It takes longer, and we always tell clients that upfront. But the participants we reach this way give you something panels never can: honest perspectives from people who had every reason to stay silent.
How do you handle research on sensitive topics — particularly those involving cultural or religious complexity?
Carefully, and with genuine respect. We design every element of the research — the setting, the moderation approach, the framing of questions — around participant comfort. In the UAE specifically, this meant choosing neutral, high-quality venues, working exclusively with bilingual moderators who understood the cultural context, and ensuring full confidentiality at every step. We never push. If a participant is uncomfortable, that's information too.
Is qualitative research in the GCC compliant with local regulations?
Yes — and this is something we take seriously on every project in the region. We work with local legal and ethical frameworks, ensure proper consent processes are in place, and manage data in line with both local requirements and our own high standards for participant dignity and data ownership. If there are specific compliance considerations relevant to your sector, we'll flag them before the project begins.
Can you run research across both expatriate and local GCC national profiles in the same study?
We can — and in this case, doing so was what made the research genuinely valuable. The contrast between those two audiences was where the real insight lived. That said, we're always honest about timelines. Reaching local nationals in culturally sensitive categories requires more groundwork, and we won't compress that process just to hit an arbitrary deadline. The findings are only worth something if the people behind them trusted us enough to be honest.
