Onboard retail in airline passenger travel today is where Internet commerce was 15 years ago, a slow crawl with lots of potential. Airlines and other passenger travel operators are pretty much offering the same products today as they did 20 years ago. For many, onboard retail still involves only duty-free and drink/snack food sales, with not much concern about quality or variety. Compared to retail activities elsewhere, onboard retail simply doesn't register on any scale. Yet, its potential is enormous.
What can the airline industry and others learn from today's most successful retailers? Web retailing which currently churns hundreds of billions of dollars in consumer goods and services sales annually offers some useful clues.
To get to the next level in onboard retail, operators need to think about serving the "audience of one" a marketing approach widely embraced on the Web today. In context of passenger travel, GuestLogix calls this approach "Passenger-Centric Merchandising". |
