Abstract

Gaining detailed insights into socio-economic characteristics and behaviour of air passengers constitutes a major benefit for stakeholders in the industry. Understanding passengers’ diverse expectations, requirements and needs can open up new revenue sources in the form of innovative products and services. Being the first mover can thus create a competitive advantage towards opponents. Market segmentation approaches help to identify key consumer groups, to design marketing strategies accordingly and maximise profits. Additionally to current passengers’ research, this paper applies an a priori technique to determine six future air passenger profiles for 2035, reflecting major developments faced by the European transport sector such as changing environmental awareness, increased use of information and communication technologies or disruptive developments like autonomous driving. Profiles enable differentiated insights into future passenger behaviour to derive implications for the transport sector.