Introduction: The Mall is Auckland Airport’s latest and boldest step towards digitalising its retail offering.
In early July, New Zealand’s leading airport company soft launched the e-commerce site (https://themall.aucklandairport.co.nz/en/). During this phase-in period passengers can shop across three airport retailers and pay via a single online basket and collect their items from a single airport collection point.The launch retailers are airport concessionaires Aelia Duty Free and two New Zealand brands, Icebreaker clothing and Walker & Hall jewellery.
It is designed to create a unique shopping experience that allows travellers to experience all the benefits of travel retail shopping from the comfort of their own devices. The Moodie Davitt Report’s Judy Free*, an Asian millennial, delves deeper into The Mall’s online features — from web design and user experience, to the variety of brands on offer.
Web Design
The Mall’s web design is sleek, contemporary and, most importantly simple. Official airport websites are invariably busy and often require multiple functionalities. As a result, they tend to look cluttered and overloaded. Often they also appear too corporate, and don’t inspire users to explore further, beyond logging onto the free Wi-fi of course.
This is why The Mall’s web design is so effective from my perspective. It is easy to navigate and optimised for mobile, which makes for a straightforward consumer experience. The use of illustrated icons is a nice touch, but also serves a practical purpose. These illustrated icons function in a universal language, and need no translations for Auckland Airport’s non-English speaking clientele.
One positive is that customers can purchase items from six months up to 24 hours before their flight. When purchasing an item online, shoppers are then given the option to collect their items either on departure or on arrival. This option makes it easy to shop (and buy) online.
Customer Experience – Positives and negatives
However, there are some work-on areas in the customer experience sphere. Currently there is no other language option on the website aside from English [Chinese is coming next year -Ed]. It is essential for any official airport website to have more than one language option. When travel retail concessionaires are making sure that they cater to a multi-lingual market in-store, their online platforms should also reflect this internationalism.
Today, home delivery, free returns, and next day shipping are the norm for e-commerce retailers worldwide. That being said, the complexities of duty free and airport shopping make these services more complicated for travel retailers. Currently, The Mall does not have (or state) a blanket returns policy, which means that each retailer is responsible for organising their own returns and refunds. This makes it unnecessarily complicated for customers to shop worry-free, given the concern of having to go through a lengthy claims process before successfully obtaining a return.
Customers also have to wait for their return to be approved by the specific retailers before getting a refund. In addition to this, due to customs regulations for duty free and tax free goods, replacement items cannot be sent to customers’ home addresses.
Finally, the Mall currently does not have a customer service chat box where customers can liaise directly with customer service specialists. Additionally, when browsing through the site’s fashion offerings, there is no sizing chart, something that should be the standard for any fashion retailer in 2018. And with the returns policy potentially complicated, this may discourage some shoppers form purchasing fashion at The Mall.
Judy’s view: A unified returns policy makes it easier for shoppers to shop without the fear of having to deal with individual retailers with different returns policies. Today, online shoppers are used to services such as next day shipping and free returns, and in this regard travel retailers and airports looking to expand to the world of e-commerce need to be particularly mindful.
Retail Offering
The Mall’s current product catalogue is currently limited due to the soft launch [though soon to be expanded considerably -Ed]. While the main categories are Spirits & Wine, Beauty & Fragrance, Jewellery, Clothing & Accessories, NZ Products, and Gifts – there is an obvious imbalance in terms of variety of brands on offer.
The Mall’s biggest retailer is Aelia Duty Free, which has a stronger focus on wines and spirits, beauty and fragrances, and electronics. By virtue of this, these categories are well-stocked with a good number of internationally recognised brands. For the Wines & Spirits category, The Mall stock brands including Zacapa, Johnnie Walker, and Glenfiddich just to name a few. For Beauty & Fragrance, they stock La Prairie, Giorgio Armani, Gucci, Clarins and Paco Rabanne. However, for Clothing & Accessories, the offer is currently limited to one brand, Ice Breaker. While Ice Breaker is a wonderful (and sustainable) brand, there is much scope here to develop an extensive fashion offer.
Judy’s view: More fashion and accessories please to complement the strong traditional products range. That will help drive a holistic and seamless duty free shopping experience across categories.
Community Building and Social Media
* Instagram
The Mall’s social media icons directly link to Auckland Airport’s official social media accounts, which makes strategic sense in terms of continuity.
With 6,513 followers and only 388 posts, the airport’s current Instagram strategy gets high marks for social media presence and community building. The tone of voice is approachable, gender-neutral, and caters to diverse age groups. The Instagram page also does well with engaging audiences by posting a lot of user-generated content. It uses posts by real travellers through Auckland Airport which makes them relatable. The platform also embraces posts of families being reunited, photographs taken by the travellers, and celebrations in the airport. A missed opportunity though with the lack of Instagram Stories.
* Facebook
Auckland Airport’s Facebook page has over 80,000 followers and for good reason. The page is full of useful information, clever video infographics, and community-targeted posts. These posts build a narrative around the people behind Auckland Airport, and promote an image of an airport that cares. These kinds of posts are particularly effective in promoting corporate image. The Facebook Page has also been successful in building a truly engaged social media community around the airport and its staff, and so is also a great platform to promote airport activations and events.
* Twitter
Auckland Airport’s Twitter Page has over 5,800 followers with some 1,609 tweets. A quick scroll down th Twitter feed reveals that its is mainly used as a communications tool for important airport announcements. The airport also has a lot of very conversational tweets that help travellers with customer service concerns, which is an effective use of Twitter’s format. However, as the Twitter page’s audience is significantly smaller than the Facebook page, the latter seems to be a better platform for important airport announcements.
Footnote: Judy Free is the alter ego of millennial Hannah Lynn Tan, a London-based fashion and lifestyle journalist. Hannah (pictured below) has worked for Vogue USA, Cent Magazine, Lifestyle Asia, Mega Magazine, and as Features Editor of TWENTY6Magazine for over two years. She will become a regular contributor to The Moodie Davitt Report’s fashion, beauty and digital/social media coverage.
