Staff interaction remains an important part of the Travel Retail experience, acting as potentially the most influential tool at our disposal for shaping decision making, but also acting as a key means of meeting shopper wants, needs and expectations. However, in order to ensure we are meeting those expectations, we need to understand the key […]
What are Duty Free’s Leading Conversion Barriers?
Last week we looked at the leading barriers to Duty Free visiting and the opportunity that increasing footfall presents for the channel. This week, we’re looking at the conversion barriers – what is stopping those who browse from actually making a purchase? Taken from the latest edition of Pi Insight’s Global Shopper Database, the leading […]
Understanding the barriers to Duty Free shopping
As a channel, we spend a lot of time focusing on what happens inside the Duty Free store in terms of how we drive interaction, improve conversion and create a more engaging and differentiated shopping experience. However, one of the biggest challenges (and opportunities!!) continues to sit further up the funnel, in terms of footfall […]
An Overview of Advanced Research Methodologies
At Pi Insight, we conduct a huge amount of both online and face-to-face consumer research, all of which is focused on the Travel retail sector. However, as time goes on, more and more Travel Retail stakeholders are looking to advanced research methodologies to answer some of their burning consumer insight questions. Advanced research methodologies, when […]
What does value actually mean in Duty Free?
Value has always been a big part of the Duty Free proposition, and traditionally that conversation has been dominated by price and promotions. Basically, travellers enter the store and expect to save money compared to other channels, such as domestic. However, the way in which shoppers are perceiving value is constantly evolving, and as more […]
Why Travel Retail is the Global Shop Window
Travel Retail is often described as a “shop window” due to its ability to give brands the opportunity to put their products in front of an ever changing, diverse mix of consumers in a single place. At Pi Insight, we have conducted a huge amount of consumer research into the true role of Travel Retail […]
As Purchase Planning Weakens, Pre-Trip Communication Should Strengthen
Pre-trip communication in Travel Retail has traditionally been associated with driving purchase intent and encouraging shoppers to plan before they travel. And in many cases, it continues to play exactly that role. However, as levels of purchase planning continue to decline (a shift that accelerated during Covid and has continued to soften year on year) […]
The Explorer vs. The Mission Shopper
A couple of weeks ago, we posted about the key shopper segments within the Travel Retail sector, with these including groups such as The Gifter, The Premium Seeker and The Value Hunter. This week, we thought it may interesting to deep dive into two distinct groups which collectively make up a fairly large proportion of […]
Behavioural Segmentation in Travel Retail: Beyond Demographics
Traditional segmentation has always been difficult to apply in Travel Retail. Why? Because unlike a weekly supermarket shop, no two travel journeys are the same. A traveller’s mindset can change depending on the destination, purpose of travel, time available, or even how they’re feeling that day. That’s why behavioural segmentation is often far more valuable […]
MaxDiff in Travel Retail: Cutting Through the Noise
At Pi Insight, we utilise a wide range of research methodologies depending on the objectives of the project and the specific questions our clients are trying to answer. However, one trend we’ve seen accelerating recently is the growing use of more advanced methodologies, particularly MaxDiff. In fact, we currently have two separate MaxDiff projects running […]









