What Is Airline Merchandising: Enhancing Revenue and Experiences

Nowadays, it’s becoming a common sight to see branded airline merchandise in airports. With most travellers doing their last-minute shopping for products to bring home as souvenirs, airline merchandising is a clever way to raise revenue, increase brand recall and consumer satisfaction.

Let’s look at airline merchandising, why they’re becoming a common sight these days and some merchandise ideas through these Emirate products that greeted our team in Dubai.

What Is Airline Merchandising?

Airline merchandising is an airline company’s way of offering promotional merchandise and services to passengers. Aside from those, it also involves ensuring it is offered in appropriate ways, time and easy for people to understand. Consequently, adding value to the travel experience they had with the company.

Additionally, it could also include third-party services in partnership with the airline.

What Are The Factors That Drive Airline Merchandising?

1. An additional avenue of profit

Branded merchandise of an airline are products people could buy apart from the seat and the flight. It’s an additional way to earn profit without the labour and maintenance costs involved in flights. It’s significantly cost-effective since promotional products are usually ordered in bulk and are highly customisable.

Starting airline merchandising allows the company to give people several choices of services they would want to purchase or avail, and flight is simply becoming one of these choices.

2. Satisfying customer experience

Passenger satisfaction during flights is centred around their comfort. If the seat is comfortable as well as the inflight service and amenities.

With the advent of airline merchandising, this satisfaction can also be influenced before and after the flights. Since most airlines have their own physical and online stores, people can shop and choose branded products they can take home or prepare for travel.

It’s an additional avenue of providing top-notch service to passengers through tangible products that can add value to their experience and trigger brand and travel experience recall.

3. Market change and trends

Due to the rise of technology, the collection and storage of user data and the use of targeted as well as personalised advertising, people are becoming more accustomed to responding to tailor-made content and advertisement.

Since airlines are trusted by people for their safety, they also trust them with the information they can use to offer people promotional merchandise and services that are made for them. This demand and trend in the market are leveraged by airlines through merchandising.

4. Building brand identity

Gone are the days when airlines are simply ways to travel. As the market shifts to a more branding and consumer-centred approach, airlines are stepping up to meet these as well.

Airline merchandising is a vital factor for airlines to build a brand people can be loyal to and associate with. So, apart from becoming another way to earn revenue, it also manages to elevate the airline in people’s minds. In turn, giving them a competitive edge against competitors.

Airline Merchandise Ideas from Emirates

There are a ton of promotional merchandise you can utilise. We’ll check airline merchandise ideas from Emirates to get your ideas rolling.

Branded Clothes

Emirates offered branded shirts, jackets, hoodies and custom hats for everyone. These are designed with their brand colour and name.

Branded clothes are one of the easiest products to customise and the most used as well.

The airline made sure to open opportunities for its market to advertise its brand all the while being functional and practical.

Accessories

People are fond of bringing small products or trinkets home. They’re small and portable which doesn’t pose any storage problems while also encapsulating the travel experience they had.

Furthermore, they easily trigger brand recall whenever travellers see them, urging repeat travels.

Famous examples of these custom merchandise are custom design keychains, branded lanyards, fridge magnets and promotional notebooks which Emirates used for their airline merchandising.

Custom Bags

Bags are highly utilised during travels.

People need to properly organize their stuff so it will be easy for them to move around and have their things at hand.

Emirates took advantage of these through the variety of custom bags they’re offering such as foldable shopping bags, drawstrings, pouches for different purposes and duffel bags.

Little Travellers

While passengers are usually adults travelling for pleasure or business, it doesn’t mean there will be no kids aboard.

The airline did not overlook this market with a strong pester power.

They offered toys such as miniature aeroplanes, aeroplane plates and cutlery sets, colouring books, and remote-controlled aeroplanes.

They also have fidget poppers designed after an aeroplane and aircraft squeezy stress ball to relieve their anxiety about flying.

The Emirates airline also has a store displaying a wide array of promotional gifts that passengers will definitely find useful before, during or after their travels.

On top of branded airline merchandise, Emirates also leverages unique experiences to power up airline marketing. Check out this recent marketing idea from the airline that we spotted in Dubai:

More blogs featuring airline merchandising:

Changi Airport from Singapore featured the country’s travel spots, culture and traditions through the airline’s Gift merchandise. They offered a wide range of travel lifestyle products, read more here:

In another promotion of Changi Airport, they ventured into a product licensing agreement and offered limited edition Pokemon merchandise to their market! Check all details here:

For a complete travel experience that would urge repeat travels, check out how Etihad Airways managed this through branded amenity kits their passengers couldn’t ignore.

Malindo Air urges passengers to travel smarter with their promotional travel kits! These branded products are reusable and handy, providing comfort to their travellers. Read all here:

HK Express offered these merchandise at low cost with the main purpose of generating awareness and exposure, generating new leads and retaining existing frequent travellers. Know more here:

To Sum It All Up,

Airline merchandising is a necessary step to take for airlines to stay relevant and meet the demands of their market. It is also an opportunity for them to increase their revenue while building a brand. It’s a shift from flight-centred offers to consumer-centred ones which respond to their interests.

If you’re looking for assistance with your branded merchandise, ODM is here to help. We’re a promotional product development company with decades of experience in the industry. We and our creative team, Mindsparkz, will work closely with you from product brainstorming to sourcing and production.

Apart from promotional products, ODM also offers a wide range of services from custom standee to greet your passengers, promotional kits to giveaways and designing point of sale displays for your travel merchandise. Contact us today!

For more benefits of working with us, we listed them all below:

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