External forces don’t help categories equally.

Yesterday I wrote about rising fuel prices accelerating EV adoption.

The exact same trigger is yielding a totally different outcome somewhere else.

Luxury sales in Dubai and Abu Dhabi have dropped sharply because of the Iran conflict.

According to recent reporting, malls are seeing declines of 30 to 50 percent, with foot traffic way down in key retail hubs.

This attack was trumpeted to be a growth engine.

And the Gulf had become one of the most important regions for brands like LVMH, Kering, and Hermès, especially as China slowed.

Now those brands are suffering.

Not a thing changed about the products.

The handbags are the same as before.
The watches, same.
And the stores, (aside from no traffic) pretty much exactly the same as a month ago.

But the context got walloped.

So tourism drops, consumer confidence gets shaky, and spending pauses, probably for a good while.

Luxury is particularly exposed to this because it relies on discretionary intent.

It’s not driven by functional need, but is instead about timing, mood, and environment.

Remove those, and demand fizzles immediately.

Now let’s compare that to EVs:

Rising fuel costs create pain and new urgency. They hammer a functional decision forward.

In one category, the same event accelerates adoption.

In another, it freezes it.

(And not just Dubai and the UAE. Imagine how these high gas prices will impact internal combustion engine sales out of Detroit and RVs out of Indiana.)

This is the part product strategy has to consider.

Your product doesn’t exist in isolation, but sits inside a system of forces you don’t control.

Some amplify demand, and others suppress it.

Which raises a more useful question than “how do we grow?”

What conditions does your product depend on to be chosen?

Want to make your product irresistible? That’s what we do as product marketing agency at Graphos Product, helping innovators turn need-driven ideas into market-ready successes.