Retail shopping at airports: Making travellers buy again

Airport retail has undergone significant change in the last decade. Today, many airports provide a broad selection of product varieties and an augmented shopping experience. In this study we focus on sequential purchasing which remains an unexplored topic in airport retail. Grounded in shopping momentum, we use real-world purchase data from 279,000 passenger boarding cards to test a conceptual model that examines relationships between first purchase expenditure, walking distances, time available for sequential shopping, crowding, payment type, product involvement, promotions and product type on sequential purchasing in three terminals at Dubai International Airport. Findings offer a significant theoretical contribution to the travel retail and sequential purchasing literature and have important practical implications for airport retail practitioners.