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Launching premium lingerie in Saudi Arabia: balancing cultural expectations with commercial goals

Next PLC
  • Research
  • Benchmarking
  • Strategy

Next wanted to grow its premium lingerie proposition in Saudi Arabia without compromising trust, cultural expectations, or conversion.

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The challenge

Next needed to understand how Saudi women discover, evaluate and buy premium lingerie online, and how to present it in a culturally conservative market without harming trust or sales.

Turning cultural complexity into commercial clarity

Rather than relying on Western best practice, we combined market intelligence with qualitative research, understanding how Saudi women actually shop before making a single design recommendation.

What we found

Premium means trust and refinement, not hyper-revealing and bold imagery. Discovery should be intentional and visible, but never intrusive on shared devices. On-body imagery builds purchase confidence when the user controls it, and imagery context, pose, framing, styling, matters more than exposure. Popular regional categories from competitors were missing from Next's offerings.

The impact

Next gained a clear, evidence-based foundation for its Saudi lingerie experience, showing that modesty and conversion are complementary when products are presented with clarity, professionalism and respect. The recommendations now guide the UX, merchandising, photography, content and localisation teams.

Our involvement

What we did

Research

Desk Research

Reviewed academic literature and market reports on Saudi consumer behaviour, modesty, premium perceptions and e-commerce trust, to set hypotheses before speaking to users.

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What it is

Reviewing academic literature and market reports on Saudi consumer behaviour, modesty, premium perceptions and e-commerce trust.

When you need it

You're entering a culturally unfamiliar market and need grounded hypotheses before talking to users.

What you'll get

A set of evidence-based hypotheses to test with real Saudi shoppers.

How we do it

Structured literature and market-report review. Typical timeline: 1 week.
Benchmarking

Competitive Analysis

Benchmarked regional and international retailers across imagery, trust signals, discovery and premium branding.

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What it is

Benchmarking regional and international retailers across imagery, trust signals, discovery and premium branding.

When you need it

You need to know what "premium" already looks like in-market before designing your own version of it.

What you'll get

A benchmark of what's working, and what's missing, across regional and international competitors.

How we do it

Structured audit of competitor sites and campaigns. Typical timeline: 1 week.
Research

Qualitative User Research

Ran semi-structured interviews with Saudi women across ages and marital statuses, alongside a local Saudi researcher, exploring how they naturally discover and buy.

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What it is

Semi-structured interviews with Saudi women across ages and marital statuses, run alongside a local Saudi researcher.

When you need it

You need to understand real discovery and buying behaviour, not assumptions imported from another market.

What you'll get

A first-hand account of how Saudi women naturally discover, evaluate and buy premium lingerie.

How we do it

Semi-structured interviews with a local co-researcher. Typical timeline: 2–3 weeks.
Strategy

Strategy & Recommendations

Translated findings into evidence-based information-architecture, product-page and brand-positioning recommendations for the Saudi experience.

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What it is

Translating findings into evidence-based information-architecture, product-page and brand-positioning recommendations.

When you need it

Research is complete and needs to become direction your UX, merchandising and content teams can act on.

What you'll get

Recommendations covering information architecture, product pages and brand positioning for the Saudi experience.

How we do it

A synthesis workshop translating findings into team-ready recommendations. Typical timeline: 1 week.
Case studies

Our research work