Air Passengers' Shopping Motivation and Information Seeking Behaviour

Journal of Air Transport Management 27 (2013) 25e28

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Journal of Air Transport Management

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jairtraman

Air passengers’ shopping motivation and information seeking behaviour

Yi-Shih Chung a, Cheng-Lung Wu b, *, Wan-Erh Chiang c

a

Department of Logistics and Shipping Management, Kainan University, No. 1 Kainan Road, Luzhu Shiang, Taoyuan 33857, Taiwan School of Aviation, University of New South Wales, Kensington, NSW 2052, Australia c Department of Restaurant, Hotel and Institutional Management, Fu Jen Catholic University, No. 510 Chung Cheng Road, Hsinchuang District, New Taipei City 24205, Taiwan

b

a b s t r a c t

Keywords: Airport retailing Shopping motivation Airport concession management

This study investigates the motivations of shoppers at Taiwan’s Taoyuan International Airport. From a sample of over 500 individuals, we find that motivations are similar to in-store shoppers elsewhere, with travel and airport motivations being a special factor depending on the airport shopping environment and local shopping cultures. While decision convenience is the main factor concerning air passengers’ information seeking in a terminal, other factors such as free time before boarding, involvement, and group travelling exercise differential effects on the information seeking behaviour of air passenger groups. This result suggests the heterogeneous information seeking behaviour patterns and implies the importance of using various strategies in providing airport retail information. Ó 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Background Retail concession businesses is often an important element in the overall financial portfolio of an airport business; including 23% of revenue for Sydney Airport in 2007, 22% for London Heathrow Airport in 2006, to the 26% for Amsterdam Airport Schiphol in 2007. In this context, passengers’ shopping expenditure patterns can be...