People traveling through Amsterdam Airport Schiphol (AMS) earlier this year might have noticed an unusual presence from Philips, the global electronics brand. Philips products were in a “pop-up area,” and travelers could stop to browse and experience the offerings.
Selling was a secondary motive: The vast majority of items on display were far too large to carry onto an airplane, says Melvin Broekaart, managing director of Amsterdam-based AirCommerce, a brand strategy and activation firm for the travel retail segment.
AirCommerce coordinated the experiment with Phillips and the results, Broekaart says, were “awesome.”
“We had a polling firm poll people who visited the Phillips pop-up area at the airport a couple of weeks after their arrival home,” he says. “They asked in-depth questions: Did you notice any brands at the airport? Have you made specific electronics purchases? Things like that. The number of people either purchasing, having a purchase intent or having a strongly increased positive impression of certain products that were displayed at the airport was enormously high.”
The results of the experiment illustrate what Broekaart and others think could be the future of travel retail. Although the Phillips experiment may be the extreme of what alterations airport retailers need to make, some experts say retailers need to take action now or see their sales dwindle as consumers continue their move to online shopping.
“There is a certain portion of buyers who do not purchase in travel retail anymore,” Broekaart says. “Instead, they are showrooming.
“We see many, many people in stores in front of shelves, seeing a product, touching it, using it,” Broekaart continues. “Then they’re using their iPhone to check what the price is elsewhere. In most cases, they find that pricing for most of the items is lower elsewhere than in the airport shop.”
Showrooming, the practice of visiting a store or stores in order to examine a product before buying it online at a lower price, is a much-discussed threat to retailers on the street and is equally daunting to airport retailers.
“There’s been a convergence of two very different things: smaller stores, because stores don’t need as big a selection as they used to, and the acceptance of the attitude that its maybe just easy to have it delivered,” says Candace Corlett, president of New York-based WSL Strategic Retail.
“Given that airports are generally populated with national retail brands, airports would seem to be a great place to be showcasing merchandise but stocking little,” Corlett adds.
Roger Thomas, managing director of London-based Research for Travel Ltd., says he agrees.
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