Singapore Airlines (SIA) is the launch customer for Panasonic Avionics’ new Marketplace e-commerce platform, a digital system that facilitates inflight ordering of retail, and food and beverage items. The platform also expands storefront retail and duty-free offerings, with the ability to present dynamic inventory during flight, and can be used to offer sales promotions throughout the customer journey, in both connected and non-connected environments.
SIA will use Marketplace for its KrisShop omni-channel shopping experience, which will be branded eShopping. Retail catalogues will be pre-loaded on to the airline’s IFE content server, so passengers can browse regardless of the connectivity status at the time. Passengers will be offered a choice of around 4,000 products to browse and buy inflight, with the choice of delivery to their homes or on their next flight.
SIA can use Marketplace to continually update and customise its retail offering and add future stores, with real-time inventory updates. The offer can also be customised to suit each route, cabin and destination – for example, different retailer catalogues can be assigned to specific routes and cabins, to align the experience to the passenger demographic. The airline can also use the Marketplace e-commerce analytics tools to continually measure and refine its performance and ensure it meets passengers’ needs and tastes.
Yeoh Phee Teik, SIA’s SVP of customer experience said, “E-commerce is the future of shopping, and integrating this feature into our in-flight entertainment system is yet another industry first for SIA.”
