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Moodie Davitt Report: AOE CEO Kian Gould named a positive disruptor of the year
December 20, 2017
In its last e-Zine in 2017, the Moodie Davitt Report has named AOE CEO Kian Gould as one of its positive disruptors of the year. The honor by one of the most influential online media of the duty free and travel retail industry recognizes digitally focused entrepreneurs “who are helping light the path forward for travel retail.”
According to a short profile in the current issue of the Moodie Davitt e-Zine “None of the industry's positive disruptors have made a bigger impact on the travel retail sector than the founder of German company AOE.”
With its innovative OM³ Suite (Omnichannel Multi-Merchant Marketplace) AOE has fundamentally changed the travel retail industry. This is particularly true for the aviation retail sector. The solution takes the dramatically changed purchasing behavior of passengers into account: “Where impulse purchases amounted to 65 to 70 percent in the past, we are now seeing less than 30 percent in impulse purchasing and around 70 percent in planned purchasing,” Gould says. To meet this challenge, airports must turn into digital marketplaces, Gould continues.
In his keynote presentation at the Trinity Forum Conference, held recently in Bangkok, Thailand, Gould gave the audience a high-level overview of the development of E-Commerce – past, present and future.
In the beginning, brands such as the US department store chain Macy’s or Target, one of the biggest American retailers, expanded their brick-and-mortar business to include an additional channel.
In the second generation of E-Commerce, the brands united and created marketplaces to lower the expenses for acquiring retail traffic.
Currently, AOE is working on the third generation of E-Commerce, something Gould calls “Unobtrusive E-Commerce”. The basic idea behind the concept is that the customer doesn’t even notice that he has just spent money on something (e.g. Uber). Gould gave Fast Track at airports as an example: When a passenger arrives late at the airport, the app on his cell phone asks him if he wants to book Fast Track. A short confirmation completes the process. The passenger doesn’t know whether the service cost 5 Euros or 20.
Please check out the video of Gould’s keynote below for an in-depth look at the topic of digitalization in airport commerce and further information about “Unobtrusive E-Commerce”.
