Consumerization - passengers toting their tablets, laptops, smartphones and e-readers on planes - has forced airlines to re-think. Should they continue to invest heavily into Inflight Entertainment (IFE) systems, or just concentrate on offering Wi-Fi and power in the cabin? The goal of this research was to define the IFE offer of the future. Four barriers that split the world into the three regions Europe, Asia and USA in terms of IFE development were identified: the cultural, the commercial, the technological and the legal barrier. This book focuses on Europe, which lags mostly behind with IFE out of these three regions. For example, as opposed to the US, no major European airline offers inflight Wi-Fi widely on its network, and in contrast to leading Middle Eastern airlines none offers inflight live TV or the usage of mobile phones without restriction, like on the ground. The target was to define IFE from a consumer perspective. To capture the latter the author evaluated consumer satisfaction methodologies and decided to go with the Kano approach, which categorizes alternatives of a product or service, in this case IFE, in must-be, attractive and indifferent elements. A representative online survey revealed movies and power to be must-be, TV and Wi-Fi to be attractive and the rest, e-books, music, games and duty free onboard, to be indifferent elements of IFE. The majority of people indicated that they would pay for movies and Wi-Fi but not for power supply, TV or other content. Differently said, content-wise passengers only insisted in the supply of movies, for the rest they expected the airline to provide Internet and power so they themselves could get the content. Further, sub-groups were analysed - people within the sample with mutual characteristics like gender, travel frequency or ownership of smart devices. So was music on a plane a must for women and owners of iPhones were more willing to pay for apps than others. Overall, country of residence, travel purpose (leisure or business) and flight duration (long vs. short haul) were the greatest dividers re IFE requirements. To answer the core question of how the future IFE should be like, the author argues that consumerization means an enormous potential. If people are consuming IFE on their personal devices, IFE can finally be fully customized leading to an increase in its take up rate and revenue, as this research indicates. Moreover, it can work as a marketing tool outside the air cabin because it is delivered on a device that is constantly in a passenger s pocket. IFE is no longer restricted to the air cabin. Airlines have been asking themselves for too long What technology can we apply and what can we subsequently offer to passengers? instead of How does a frictionless great consumer experience of IFE present itself nowadays? It should no longer be Inflight Entertainment but Airline Entertainment, starting long before passengers board a plane, e.g. by being incorporated in the smart devices app of an airline, displaying games to men that are browsing flights and suggesting duty free bargains to holiday goers so they can add them onto a wish list and purchase the items when airborne. All of this, making entertainment part of the entire travel value chain.

Autorentext

Jasmin Schawalder was born in 1981 to a Peruvian mother and a Swiss father. She offers ten years of experience of working in international marketing positions post her Bachelor's degree in Business Administration. In 2013 she additionally graduated from the London (UK) entity of renowned French Grenoble Graduate School of Management as MBA, with distinction, in Global Management. Her core strengths lie in marketing for the mobile industry and consumer technology, in Europe, the US and Latin America. Travelling internationally about half of her time and being an enthusiast for consumer tech, researching and taking part in the discussion about Inflight Entertainment is one of her fields of great interest.

Leseprobe
Chapter 2.2., Focus Europe:
This project was not only limited to the areas considered (cultural and commercial) but also to a certain geography. The following explains the rationale behind this restriction.
Wi-Fi in American skies but not in European
As of September 2012, 31% of US domestic flights came equipped with inflight Wi-Fi (Asay, 2013).
This number is high compared to intercontinental flights in Europe where Wi-Fi is still rare. Europe lags behind when it comes to IFE, compared to both the US and Asia. The four largest airlines in terms of passenger volume in the USA are American Airlines, United Airlines (United), Delta Airlines (Delta) and Southwest (about.com, 2010). All four offer inflight Wi-Fi on domestic flights, in all cabins, so including the economy cabin. United Airlines as first US carrier even offers Wi-Fi on some international routes via satellites (American Airlines, United Airlines, Delta Airlines, Southwest, 2013).
Terrestrial Wi-Fi provider GoGo by December 2012 had equipped 1500 planes with ist technology to date. This represented half of the fleet of ist two big customers Delta and American Airlines (GoGo, 2012).
The three largest European Airlines in terms of passenger volume are Air France-KLM (KLM), British Airways (BA) and Lufthansa (Reuters, 2008). The first two are running some trials in offering Wi-Fi in their first or business classes, Lufthansa meanwhile is exploring Wi-Fi in all cabin classes on a few routes (Air France-KLM, British Airways, Lufthansa, 2013).
No prizes for European IFE
Besides the lag in offering inflight Wi-Fi, no European airline has ever won a global prize by the two world-known and recognised organisations Skytrax and Apex. Both organisations get consumers to rate the IFE of airlines and then award prizes in several categories year after year. Apex focuses on inflight offering, from entertainment to food and the security video, whereas Skytrax lets people rate the overall experience with the airline, from booking, to lounges, check-in and inflight experience. Both elect a global winner, which is the more recognised prize in the industry, and regional (per continent) winners. None of the big US airlines has won either of the global prizes the past four years (Skytrax, Apex, 2013).
However, smaller US airline Virgin America has won the global Apex prize for the best inflight experience for airlines with a fleet up to 50 aircrafts in the past three years. The global winner for airlines with a fleet greater than 50 in this period was Emirates - the airline company headquartered in the United Arab Emirates (Apex, 2013).
The latter also won the prize of best airline globally by Skytrax in 2013 and figured in the top ten the precedent four years. Qatar Airways won it in 2012 and 2011, scored third in 2010 and second in 2013. Other than Turkish Airlines no European airline has made it into the Skytrax top ten of IFE the past five years. The top ten was filled with either Asian or Middle Eastern airlines (Skytrax, 2013).
IFE of these Middle Eastern airlines comprises of a vast of content. Emirates declared that they offer more than 300 on-demand movies and other content that required 2 terabytes of data storage per plane (Emirates, 2012).
Also the new flagship, an aircraft Boeing 777-300, of American Airlines (AA) comes with massive content. The managing director of onboard products revealed that customers could enjoy 250 movies, 180 television shows and 350 audio programs aboard. She also detailed that theoretically one could fly around the globe 15 times without having to consume the same content twice (Maxon, 2013).
Lufthansa for example only offers 30 movies and 30 music channels within their current IFE (Lufthansa, 2013).
Moreover, both Emirates and Qatar Airways have installed touch screens that are on par with those of smartphones when it comes to usability and that are remarkably larger than traditional in-s…