The contribution of retailing to total airport revenue is becoming more important. This study examines the relationship between passengers' shopping motivations and their commercial activities at airports, as well as the moderating effects of time pressure and impulse buying on this relationship. A sample of passenger survey data was collected at Taiwan's Taoyuan International Airport. Three shopping motivations, namely, “favorable price and quality”, “environment and communication”, and “culture and atmosphere,” are identified based on the results of factor analysis. The results reveal that passenger shopping motivations have positive impacts on commercial activities at the airport, and furthermore both time pressure and impulse buying tendency moderate the relationship between shopping motivations and commercial activities.
As shopping is one of the most popular activities that travelers engage in at airports, retailing thus plays an important role in airport operations (Crawford & Melewar, 2003), and is a valuable source of revenue (Geuens, Vantomme, & Brengman, 2004; Rowley & Slack, 1999). Many airports are thus engaging in initiatives to enlarge and enhance their commercial offerings, with some reporting that non-aviation revenues account for as much as 53 percent of total revenues (Castillo-Manzano, 2009; Graham, 2009; Painvin, 2011; Zhang & Zhang, 1997). Such non-aviation revenues come not only from air passengers, but also from airport employees and visitors, due to the growth of airport-linked business (Kasarda, 2008). A better understanding of the relationship between travelers' shopping motivations and their commercial activities within an airport could provide airport operators with useful operational and strategic insights, and this is one of the reasons for the current study.
Airports are unique retailing environments in which travelers experience feelings of anxiety, stress and excitement, which can make them react in unusual ways, and thus they are unlike general shoppers in a high street situation. Many travelers suffer from a certain degree of anxiety and/or have certain expectations about their journeys (Crawford & Melewar, 2003; Newman & Lloyd-Jones, 1999), and while waiting for their flights are able to engage in various activities, with the two most popular being shopping and eating (Geuens et al., 2004; Kim & Shin, 2001). Passengers are likely to feel time pressure in an airport for several reasons, such as the security checks, the often long distances between passport control and the gates, and the generally non-familiar environment, which can be very disorienting. To avoid this, many people now arrive very early for their flights, and thus there has been an increase in passenger “dwell time”, the time spent within the terminal building prior to departure, and identified as a ‘happy hour’ by Thomas (1997). In addition, airports provide an environment that can trigger passengers' impulsive buying behaviors, with highly impulsive shoppers being especially receptive to sudden, unexpected buying ideas (Omar & Kent, 2001). Geuens et al. (2004) argue that almost 60 percent of air travelers can be categorized as impulsive buyers, while Topping (2010) estimates that 27 percent of airport purchases are made on impulse. This environment has attracted the interest of many major retailers (Grant, 2006). Therefore, we postulate time pressure and the impulse buying tendency act as salient two personal characteristics of passengers in their commercial activities in an airport context.
In this study we investigate the relationship between passengers' shopping motivations and commercial activities within an airport environment. Furthermore, the moderating effects of passengers' time pressure and impulse buying tendency on the motivation–activity relationship are also examined to provide more insights into air passengers' shopping behavior.
Traveler shopping and dining are the primary sources of airport commercial revenues, and shopping is a way for air travelers to use their dwell time to reduce anxiety and boredom. Airport operators should thus maximize the utility of travelers' happy hour by employing various retail strategies to trigger travelers' shopping behaviors, and ultimately increase retailing revenue. Although the shopping behavior of travelers at the airport has been studied in other works, ours is the first attempt to integrate time pressure and impulse buying tendency with shopping motivations to study commercial activities in the airport context. Therefore, the results of this study can provide useful information for airport and retail planning and management. Consistent with previous studies, such as Crawford and Melewar (2003), Hausman (2000), Omar and Kent (2001), and Thomas (1997), travelers' engagement in commercial activities at airports is influenced by various shopping motivations. Specifically, we find that travelers' motivation in terms of favorable price and quality would affect their purchases of luxuries and travel products within an airport, while dining and leisure activities are driven by their environment and communication motivation and culture and atmosphere motivation. This provides an important opportunity to airports and retailers, in that they could increase their revenues by building an atmosphere and environment to enhance travelers' shopping motivations. In addition, the shopping motivations highlighted by this study can enable airport operators to segment the airport shopper market and design more effective marketing strategies. Omar and Kent (2001) identify three main groups of airport shopping travelers: the shopping traveler, the browser traveler and the fast-track traveler. By carefully marketing the airport environment, airport operators can effectively convert travelers' “dwell time” into shopping time.
Furthermore, the impulse buying tendency has a moderating effect on the relationship between shopping motivations and commercial activities at the airport, especially for luxuries and travel products. Luxuries provide consumers with a sense of indulgence and monetary value (Anderson & Littrell, 1995; Nueno & Quelch, 1998), while travel products are usually necessities, such as travel guides, device chargers and camera. According to this view, in addition to providing meaningful, familiar and comfortable brand name products to raise travelers' shopping motivations, airports and retailers should also offer more special prices and high-quality products to meet the needs of various travelers. In addition, travelers who stay in a crowded store that has limited quantities of the items on sale may also experience a stronger impulse buying tendency. Bian and Forsythe (2012) also state that retailers can convey feelings of pleasure and deliver a fun experience to shoppers by offering a well-organized assortment of products and upscale ambience, or through remarkable service quality that generates an enjoyable, fun experience with the brand. It is thus reasonable that our findings showed that the purchase of luxuries and travel products within an airport is often due to the interaction between impulse buying tendency and environment and communication motivation.
Consistent with previous studies (Bowes, 2002; Kim & Kim, 2008; Thomas, 1997), our study found that time pressure also moderates the effects of shopping motivation on travelers' decisions whether or not to buy luxuries and travel products in an airport. Luxury is a subjective concept (Phau & Prendergast, 2000) that depends on each consumer's perceptions of indulgent value, and luxury items are relatively unique due to their high prices and restricted distribution (Bian & Forsythe, 2012). Retailers who make significant use of promotions while offering limited quantities of product may thus be able to encourage travelers to make a purchase decision at an airport. In addition, retailers can also emphasize the risk-free purchasing, such as by offering guarantees and warranties, and well-trained sales staff, in order to maximize in-store shopping. By adopting these strategies, retailers may be able to speed up passengers' decision-making processes under the high time pressure environment of an airport. Airport operators should thus not lose sight of the importance of time-related factors (i.e., check-in time, security process and pre-flight waiting time) when catering to travelers' shopping motivations. Therefore, the airport and retailers should not only focus on atmospherics, but should also pay equal attention to the efficiency of transaction time, traffic flow and sales personnel assistance, all of which may reduce the passengers' time pressure. If possible, operators should collaborate with the government and airlines to reduce the time needed to process passengers into the “dwell time”, without causing airport security concerns. Finally, the results of this study show that neither time pressure nor the impulse buying tendency have a moderating effect on dining and recreational commercial activities. Meanwhile, Grimsley (2012) points out that food and beverages accounted for 2% of total airport industry revenue in 2010. A possible reason for this may be that eating and drinking within an airport is a very common activity that travelers often do when waiting for their flight.
Overall, this study establishes both time pressure and the impulse buying tendency as theoretically relevant constructs for understanding traveler's shopping behaviors within an airport. However, as in most studies, there are some limitations that can provide directions for future research. First, we acknowledge that different types of products might influence passengers' airport shopping behaviors in different ways. Passengers may well spend their time at airports looking closely at products, touching, trying and appraising them, before actually making purchases elsewhere – either from retail outlets nears their home or online. This may be particularly true for consumer electronics, such as tablet computers or cameras, where the purchaser may have some concerns about after sales services if there are any problems with the product. However, such concerns are less significant when purchasing a book or souvenirs. Future research can take into account the moderating effects of products types when investigating passengers' airport shopping behaviors. Second, airports may offer passengers the opportunity to have extended interactions with products (Weaver, 2007), and thus affect passengers' purchasing behaviors in this way (Reed, 2004). However, this study did not examine this issue, and thus future researchers are encouraged to investigate the longer-term effects of physical product placement and demonstration in airports, and to examine whether airports are suitable locations to promote products that will be purchased elsewhere. Third, since 70% of the respondents in this study were Taiwanese citizens, and the data was collected at one airport, generalization of our results should be undertaken with caution. More research efforts in other regions and cultural contexts are thus recommended. Last but not least, the effects of in-store atmosphere on shopping behaviors, which have been studied in other retailing contexts, can be extended to the airport retailing environment. Due to the unique characteristics that arise when combining air travel and retailing in this context, it is likely that further investigations of this issue will lead to new insights with regard to the related shopping behaviors.
