Keep’Em High

Lebanese mobile phone users are getting a bad deal. Do they care?

It is a fact: Lebanon has one of the highest mobile phone rates in the region. But does that mean that tomorrow’s campaign, where thousands of Lebanese will turn their phones off to protest those rates, will be a success? 
 
Hardly. The Lebanese consumer can be a difficult beast to understand. Many theories have been made about the Lebanese being a kind of “show-off” consumer. I witnessed it first hand when a retailer told a TV program that if he reduced his prices too much people will stop buying. It is perhaps a stereotype, but there’s no smoke without fire. Lebanese cell-phone usage remains one of the highest in the world despite the ripoff rates.
 
To illustrate our attitude further, here’s a case in point: A Facebook event was created for tomorrow’s boycott and thousands of Lebanese were invited to take part. Here are the statistics until the writing of this post: 4,473 people will take part, 2,312 ignored the invitation, 1710 are not sure yet, and 3,182 declined. Yes, 3,182 people made it a point that they will decline to participate in the boycott. Some are even publicly disputing the event’s worthiness in the group’s forum.
 
Now that’s the kind of consumers producers love, don’t you think?