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Given the time constraints faced by passengers to shop and explore during air travel, airports have emerged as indispensable gateways to leisure. A place where passengers can indulge themselves in social interactions, business opportunities, and frictionless hyper-personalized shopping experiences. Hence, it is important for retail setups within airport boundaries to be more digitally connected and prepared in advance to engage thousands of travelers.
The key to success here is a seamless customer experience by ensuring that the travelers are kept ‘informed, interested, and involved,’ during their stay inside the airports, eventually leading to significant improvements in brand-customer connections and non-flying revenues. To get there, the aviation industry is now clinching on transformative technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI), which is a proven game-changer to unlock new frontiers of world-class retail experiences.
Leveraging AI in airport retail to improve customer experience
According to Precedence Research, worldwide artificial intelligence in the aviation market was valued at US$ 653.74 million in 2021. It is predicted to exceed US$ 9,985.86 million by 2030, with a CAGR of 35.38% from 2022 to 2030. In today’s digital transformation era, where passengers are habitual to more connected, fast, and personalized engagements in real-time, AI-centric operations open a new paradigm in airport retailing by navigating major roadblocks, including siloed data, lack of customer insights, and disparate distribution strategies.
Artificial intelligence at the forefront of the above-mentioned bottlenecks, enables enterprises to simplify the age-old manual airport processes, which are often slow and error-prone. It creates more hyper-relevant customer experiences end-to-end by improving operational efficiency at the intersection of big data and digital engineering capabilities. As a result, this fosters enhanced customer loyalty and drives new non-aeronautical revenue growth.
What’s more? As a game-changer, artificial intelligence and its cognitive technologies transform how people’s leisure experience at airports in a secure way through
- In-store marketing personalization:
Delivery of personalized marketing communications and product recommendations play a vital role in enhancing the client experience while boosting the probability of purchase. Retailers send push notifications via the app for tailor-made recommendations and discount offers using Artificial Intelligence, which further helps them explore passenger data and better understand their preferences, once purchases, and browsing behavior.
To drive engagement and sales the extra mile, retailers harness the power of AI-powered digital signage to display targeted advertisements based on demographics and client behavior. For example - an AI-powered self-checkout system is a perfect breakthrough in airport retail settings to reduce waiting time and make shopping more accessible for time-pressed travelers. - Pre and post-purchase engagements:
The performance of retail stores at the fronts of pre and post-sale support greatly enhances the passenger shopping experience at airports. By applying a virtual assistant powered by AI in the pre-sales settings, retailers are able to engage with their customers in a truly immersive way by understanding their natural language questions and providing responses in a friendly and conversational tone.
During pre-sales, AI helps brands utilize the raw data as a valuable insight to forecast demands, predict consumer behavior and the next purchase. Using the same insights, brands can improvise their offerings by recommending the right products to the customers.
What’s more? Conversational assistants drive positive emotional connections by resolving service queries round-the-clock, proactively helping retailers in preventing complaints. Using AI in post-purchase settings enables retailers to provide personalized after-sale experiences by troubleshooting customers’ problems quickly with relevant information - making their journey memorable.
Also, the emergence of generative conversational assistants like open AI language models ChatGPT enables retail commerce brands to serve their customers more inclusively by providing them with more relevant responses in real-time. Such intelligent conversations drive positive connections and improve customer satisfaction by speeding up real-time customer engagement 5x with personalized recommendations making buyers feel more like they are talking to humans. - Inventory Optimization:
AI can help retailers manage their supply by forecasting product demand based on factors like passenger flow, flight schedules, seasonality, and trends. This not only reduces the risk of overstocking or understocking, but also ensures that popular products are always available, leading to enriched customer satisfaction and advanced sales. - Pricing Optimization:
Dynamic pricing is another area where AI can be critical. By analyzing transaction data, customer behavior, and other factors, AI can adapt prices in real-time to maximize earnings. For instance, prices could be lowered during off-peak hours to encourage sales or raised for in-demand particulars.
AI-drive airport retailing paves the way for seamless customer experiences
In the fast-paced world of airport retail, AI is proving to be a vital tool for enhancing customer experience and boosting deals. By furnishing personalized marketing, optimizing stock and pricing, and enhancing the shopping experience, AI can help airport retailers thrive in this competitive terrain. As technology advances, AI possibilities in airport retail are vast, making this an instigative space to watch in the coming years.
