INTERNATIONAL. Newly formed industry research entity m1nd-set Generation is set to launch a rolling programme of research into airport consumer behaviour that involves face-to-face interviews at 20 major airports.
The continuous study, described as “the first ongoing behavioural research for the travel retail industry,” will analyse consumer travel and shopping behaviour from a total of 40,000 customer interviews over a two-year period.
The tracking programme will aim to uncover trends in consumer shopping behaviour such as the reasons to (and not to) purchase in all categories and sub-categories, destination of purchase in all categories and sub-categories, shopping basket size and contents, touch points, needs, paths to purchase, demographics and segmentation. It will also provide reasons for travelling and provide insights into travel trends such as the rise in popularity of weekend city breaks.
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The 20,000 yearly airport interviews will be conducted on a continuous monthly basis, and airports will be alternated every year. This, said m1nd-set Generation, will provide “a global long-term picture and pattern”.
m1nd-set CEO & Owner Peter Mohn said: “By conducting the research over several years, we will not only be able to illustrate the evolving shopping trends in all significant markets; we’ll be able to do a great deal more. As this data will be analysed alongside Generation sales data and travel forecasts, two other key pillars of the Big Data project, we will be able to explain the reasons for changes in sales across the various categories and sub-categories in all regions of the world.
” It will also enable us to forecast future travel shopping trends and understand competing channels such as online shopping, which has never yet been done in travel retail industry research.
“Additionally, subscribers will have permanent access to the data already from Q2, 2016, and then continuously, since the database will grow every month due to the unremitting fieldwork.”
m1nd-set’s Travel Retail shopper segmentation, which was developed in partnership with TFWA, APTRA and several category leaders, will be quantified at an airport level and for all key nationalities through this behavioural tracking research at airports.
m1nd-set joint-CEO & Co-owner David Perroud said: “By providing a long-term view we will bring continuity in the data as well as addressing seasonal variations. Subscribers to the programme will be able to track the evolution over time. That is a vital element for the marketing intelligence departments at many of our travel retail clients.
“The airports, retailers and suppliers need to quantify the essential metrics over time and across the seasons, rather than have a spotlight on just one time period. Aspects like the size of the segments, the amounts spent and the shopping baskets can only be accurate if we have a sample that is representative of the traffic at the airport across the whole year”.
Generation CEO Fredrik Lindh added: “Not only can our clients benchmark their own sales performance against our sales data, but now also their own consumer behaviour data against this ongoing insights programme. By rolling out this key pillar we are achieving a major step towards a new level of business intelligence in travel retail. The ultimate goal of course is to continuously help the industry convert more travellers into shoppers.”
