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Catering to the needs of Obligation Meeters with airline merchandising
Meg O'Keefe
Director Sales & Merchandising Solutions, Airline IT, Amadeus IT Group
From lightsaber chopsticks and Darth Vader can coolers to R2-D2 themed airplanes, merchandising for the new Star Wars film is at a fever pitch. While most carriers don’t have an iconic classic to help fuel their merchandising efforts, they can leverage technology to take it to the next level by merchandising the relevant offer to travellers, delivered through the retailing channel of choice, at each decisive moment, in a way that is visually appealing, easy to understand, convenient to purchase and truly personalised.
Travellers expectations
Travellers increasingly expect airlines to provide them with more choice and a wider range of services that are tailored to their needs, desires and preferences. Amadeus Anytime Merchandising can help airlines cater to these expectations by understanding who the customer is, what their travel and interaction context is and then adapting the offer in terms of content, price and optimal delivery mechanism. This allows airlines to meet traveller expectations whilst optimising the revenue potential.
Take Obligation Meeters for example. They are constrained by the need to meet some bounded objective. As such, they have very distinctive needs when travelling. By understanding the needs and behaviours of this traveller type, airlines can offer personalised services at the right time and place to maximise every merchandising revenue opportunity in the trip cycle.
Obligation Meeters may prefer their flights at certain times of the day, so airlines can make sure these options are listed in a priority display. Since Obligation Meeters are frequently business travellers, airlines are also able to respond with merchandising offers specifically tailored to their business travel needs, like on board Wi-Fi, priority seating or lounge access.
Providing comprehensive solutions
The Amadeus Global Merchandising System is a suite of comprehensive solutions among which personalised merchandising is a key asset for airlines in delivering these capabilities by leveraging data from all traveller interactions and applying the optimal merchandising strategies. Such merchandising solutions enable airlines to take control in real-time with a single, up to date 360 degree view of travellers’ profiles composed of historical and current context data insights that can be used to push personalised rich offers and service options at any time. This allows the travellers to choose the most relevant flights and services based on their individual or broader segment needs. For airlines, the revenue opportunity is huge with such solutions, and could mean US$130 billion in additional revenues by 2020.
Have a look at this Amadeus Global Merchandising System video for more about harnessing the ‘force’ of our technology to better cater to the needs of travellers and download our Traveller Tribes 2030 report to learn about Obligation Meeters.
Tags
Merchandizing, Research