Pre-planned Shoppers Need to be Targeted at Pre-planning Stage through On-line Marketing, Performance Marketing, DM- Abhijit Das, Delhi Duty Free

Agency Reporter got an opportunity to interact with Abhijit Das, Head of Marketing at Delhi Duty Free. He has been associated with DDFS for the past 9 years. He is a Marketing & Business Management professional with 17 years of experience and has worked in diverse industries such as Retail, Real Estate, Hospitality, Digital Marketing & Advertising. 

For his diligence and hardwork, he was awarded the “Marketing Professional of The Year- 2014, CMO Council – Global Brand Congress”.

1. How has the duty free shopping evolved in India over the last few years?

Early stage travel retail growth was driven by new private airports. However, air travel is no longer considered to be expensive and there are frequent travelers. Travel retail in India is booming making airports the new retail destination in the country. Brands are expanding their footprint at key airports across India, thereby reaching out to the well-heeled traveler, who is looking for premium products in potential retail environments. Within travel retail: Duty free retailing is expanding fastest due to superior growth rates. Retailers like Delhi duty free is bringing in a paradigm shift in travel retail with world best brands, amazing in shop experience in new world class shops.

2. With the emergence of a plethora of online platforms today, are your marketing tactics also being influenced? Do you think you should be repeating influencer programs done earlier with leading lifestyle journalists in 2013?

Online platforms have no impact in DF business. None of the platforms have even 25% of brands what we sell in our stores. It’s not only range but newness as well. We get to retail many brands, months ahead its availablility in Indian city stores or online platforms.

Influencer programs done earlier with leading lifestyle journalists as our social media editor & influencer worked excellent for us. In 2010 – 2014, we were in a stage of business where travelers were to be told. Now, India too has world class duty free shops, great range, authentic products. What is available in shopping paradise like Singapore, Dubai , London etc is also available here. Thus, these campaigns served its purpose.

Today, we are in a phase of business where customers believe we have world-class store: now the requirement is to mind & make a preferred position of planned shoppers.  We are looking at influencer programs but which will be very focused category driven.

Challenge today is to reach customer at pre-planning stage  and continue to communicate with them till we meet them at airports & then lead them to shop with us through various engagement oriented programs. DDFS social media & marketing campaigns have recently won prestigious Awards at international forums & its testimonial of over 200% rise in performance of website, social media engagement, organic reach etc.

3. Since you deal with mostly the impulsive buyers, how do you manage to pull the crowd? Also, I don’t see you catering to the senior citizen category at all. How do you map the buyer persona?

69% of shoppers are pre-planned shoppers. They form a key target audience & as said earlier, targeting them from pre-planning stage through on-line marketing , performance marketing, DM paly key role in increasing their chances of shopping with us.  Also, this also shows success of Delhi duty free business model, when we started 35% were only planned shoppers now its other way around. We retaining most of repeat shoppers/ travelers.

In-store engagement is key to success; unless shop has experiential engaging activities (small or big), travel retail won’t be successful. We are always working to better experience & engagement through in store retail theater activations.

Anyone who travels occasionally or frequently is our audience & we continue to retail products for them. Senior citizen is a world to define age of consumer which is a bit outdated. As you will see more and more 60+ aged travelers traveling abroad for holiday and share buying pattern which are similar to 45- 50 years old.

4. I believe your competition is more territory based and you are also not completely B2B. It is basically the travel segment that you operate in. How do you devise your marketing strategy? What parameters do you keep in mind?

We are 100% B2C. DDFS Marketing Mission is to spread brand awareness and create a sense of excitement amongst our members & potential shoppers when they look forward to traveling international. Passenger today has equal opportunity to shop in Delhi or to a place from where to where they are traveling (airports). Thus, entire marketing is focused on Pretravel (travel plan, airport) & in-shop experience (retail theater, pricing, humble staff, world-class retail atmosphere, range etc.). Focused measurable digital marketing plays key role.

Key parameters of success is continuous increase sales  & penetration  along with increasing share of repeat shoppers.

Duty free means beyond custom frontiers of country. Thus, allowing domestic shoppers to buy without paying duty will defeat the purpose and destroy domestic industry who pay excise eon goods. Though many countries allow but after paying duty; that if allowed Indian can help but products will become costlier and one of the key benefits of duty-free is its duty free, that will be gone. 

5. What is your comment on airline tie-ups with the duty-free shops? Do you think they yield better profits?

We do have few a tie ups in place and these are good to have. But most airline shave onboard duty free business, which compete with land duty free.

6. Why don’t you target a flyer just when he books a ticket? An advertisement with some great offers will be luring enough to plan their shopping list in advance.

Yes, these things are done as explained earlier. We will now be using Machine learning & artificial intelligence to be more focused in pre travel marketing.