White Paper: An Outlook into Airline Retailing in 2018
Abstract
This past year has seen considerable activity in airline travel distribution in what has been an effort for many airlines to initiate a change to a more retail-focused behaviour. This is not a change forced by airlines, it is brought upon airlines by consumers, digitalisation and the retail market. We are all aware that most airlines cannot make the change alone. Many will be reliant on various industry entities engaging in this shift, and require time. This is nothing new, and the Diffusion of Innovation theory, originally set up in the 1960s, already separated the market into categories of innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority and laggards in terms of the adoption curve of innovation. It also states that typically, 100% market saturation of an innovation is only reached some time after even the laggards have adopted the innovation, meaning that this is a lengthy process. However, this…