In the ever-evolving world of global travel retail, we are expected to be agile but consistent, innovative but authentic, premium but accessible. Trends should be approached not with caution, but with a strategic lens to maximise their potential. Here, ARI’s Global Insights Manager, Deirdre Roache and Global Head of eCommerce and Innovation, Sarah Jane Lynch discuss a new strategic lens at ARI and how the driver of innovation across the business is always the customer.

According to Deirdre Roache, ARI’s Global Insights Manager, “The customer has always been at the heart of everything we do at ARI – now we’re firmly placing them in the driving seat, and we have an even clearer roadmap for unlocking further growth in travel retail. It means that not only is ARI best placed to respond to the needs of our customers, we’re anticipating them; we’re already prepared for the future demands and new opportunities. We’re going where no other operator has ventured, driven by our vision to be the world’s favourite airport retailer and partner of choice.”

This new segmentation model is designed to be more intuitive, more robust and more flexible. As part of the research, we engaged over 46,000 passengers from 27 countries to create in-depth consumer profiles, using both qualitative and quantitative research methodology coupled with social listening and AI tools that track commercial activity globally.

Our locations can use this model to understand the behaviours of consumers travelling from a particular destination and adjust our proposition accordingly to both enhance the retail experience of current shoppers as well as growing penetration by attracting new shoppers to travel retail. The purpose-built model was designed to be used across all levels of our business – from informing strategic decisions by senior management through to empowering our customer-facing sales professionals to understand the individual needs, concerns, and potential barriers to purchase as they engage with customers on the shop floor.

Importantly, we have identified several “opportunity spaces” for our business – taking “trends” and turning them into areas of strategic growth. Combined with our new segmentation tool, we can now pinpoint the most relevant opportunities for a particular customer at a particular location, meaning that our decision-making is quicker, more informed, more impactful, and always current.

Together with our airport partners and our brand partners, we can deliver elevated and truly impactful retail experiences through our various CVP initiatives, ultimately bringing joy to passengers.”

“We can already see how the newly defined opportunity spaces will impact our strategic decision making, particularly when it comes to digital innovation”, says Sarah Jane Lynch, Global Head of eCommerce and Innovation. “The two are symbiotic – the opportunity spaces help to inform our digital proposition, and digital innovation will allow us to maximise these opportunity spaces to their full potential across the business.

It’s important to say that all of these opportunity spaces aren’t completely new for ARI – it’s a more scientific way of identifying the most important areas of focus based on actual passenger needs and elevating what we deliver within each.

We see new digital trends emerging constantly, and it can often be difficult to gauge their longevity and viability. This new approach of identifying core opportunity spaces for the business helps us to funnel digital trends and decide which are most viable in the short, medium and long term. It’s simply a more structured approach that allows us to make even more informed decisions.

We are continually exploring new ways to enhance the retail journey for passengers, both through digital experiences in-store and online, be that on our own eCommerce sites, social platforms or through the airport digital hubs. Now this will be done through the lens of our opportunity spaces coupled with in-depth passenger profiling.

For example, Retailtainment and Personalisation are nothing new to our business, but several recent global brand activations have shown the potential of digital to unlock growth within our opportunity spaces at ARI.

Jameson’s recent Arrive Like a Local global travel retail campaign, which ran across 9 countries, achieved the highest global redemption through our activation at Dublin Airport Duty Free. Why? Because this was a strategic opportunity for our business executed with an unrivalled partner-led approach across all retail touchpoints.

With this razor-sharp knowledge of the passengers travelling through our stores, coupled with strategically defined opportunity spaces and constant innovation, we are equipped more than ever to elevate the travel retail experience.”

“Everything we do begins and ends with our customer, and we know this too is a shared value of our trusted brand and airport partners. We look forward to taking them on this journey with us as together we deliver an unrivalled customer-centric travel retail experience, delivering joy on your way” Deirdre Roache.

If you are interested in hearing more about ARI’s Future Customer Initiative, contact Deirdre Roache, Global Insights Manager: droache@ari.ie.