The importance of rich content in the "attention economy"

Introduction The importance of rich content in “the attention economy”

Our industry partner this month is ATPCO.

The term 'the attention economy' has been around for over 20 years. As the academic who originally coined the term, Matthew Crawford put it, “attention is a resource — a person has only so much of it.”

Competition for that attention online is constantly increasing. However, so is the mass of information and choices presented to consumers, especially in the e-commerce and online shopping space.

Looking specifically at the airline industry, consumers are often confused by the ever-expanding options presented to them, especially as services beyond the actual ticket are unbundled.

To take just one example, many full service airlines now encourage passengers to pre-book and pay for seats in economy (rather than offering this for free). But even in economy you’ll sometimes find three, four or even five options all at different price points.

There are good commercial reasons why that’s so. However, if the information isn’t presented to passengers in the right way, that confusion and choice surplus could end up losing airlines revenue, especially as the content and choices are often being shown to passengers on third party sites.

That’s where our September industry partner, ATPCO comes in. ATPCO’s rich content helps airlines and distributors differentiate and better monetize their products.

It creates modern retailing solutions for airlines and sales channels by merging the industry’s most reliable, comprehensive fare data with consumer-friendly, standardized rich content. The result is better conversions and higher sales.

In this guide we’ll look at a few different areas.

1. We’ll start by examining the research which underpins the importance of getting choice vs clarity vs relevance right.

2.We’ll then look at a few studies carried out by ATPCO’s content experts. One showed how customers react better when they see actual human beings in visuals (e.g. in imagery promoting an IFE system).

3. Another identified considerable confusion when passengers were presented with codeshare flights on a flight booking website.

4. An article by Gianni Cataldo, ATPCO’s Head of Research & Development, tackles that issue of choice and confusion, with a specific focus on the Next Generation Storefront (or NGS™ for short).

5. For a successful and recent example of how marketing initiatives and rich content driven in-flight shopping experiences can be combined to increase revenue, we’ve got a case-study from United.

To mark the start of the American College Football season, United saw an opportunityto add non-stop flights to cater or ans who want to attend the most anticipated matches.

ATPCO created and deployed cu stom graphics that are currently live in sales channels.

6. Finally, we’ll look at some of the research about how Chinese travellers react to rich content, especially visuals. This is particularly relevant in light of twoannouncements this year. This is particularly relevant in light of two announcements this year.

ATPCO has signed an agreement with TravelSky, the leading provider of information technology solutions forChina’s aviation and travel industry. At the same time, the largest online travel company in China, Ctrip, has signed a multi-year deal for ATPCO’s retailing content.