Product Strategy, eCommerce
International Airport
In late 2023, I worked with a major airport to shape their direct-to-consumer eCommerce offering. Partnering with a team of functional leads and product consultants, we supported the client in defining a shared vision for the future of eCommerce and captured the requirements to bring this vision to market.
Role: Consultant (Product & Experience)
Duration: November 2023 – February 2024 (4 months)
Team: Engagement Partner, Product Lead, Functional Lead, 2x Consultants
Skills: Customer Research, Market Analysis, Prioritization, Requirements
I. Overview
The Client
The client, a global airport serving millions of passengers annually, recently announced an ambitious 10-year plan to transform its operations and enhance customer experience. As part of its ongoing commitment to driving innovation, the airport aims to launch a new eCommerce platform to engage customers, establish partnerships, and generate new digitally-enabled revenue streams.
The Challenge
Building a digital marketplace for first and third-party sellers, hosting thousands of unique products and serving millions of global customers, is a complex endeavor. With multiple client business units involved—including Retail, Commercial, and Parking—there were conflicting visions and ambitions on the role of eCommerce at the airport and its desired capabilities. The client required guidance on scoping its MVP, managing diverse expectations, and navigating the functional aspects of developing this offering.
As such, I framed the project around the following question:
“How might we design a direct-to-consumer eCommerce offering that enhances the passenger experience while driving revenue for the airport?”
II. My Role
My Approach
Within the product development cycle, the client had already defined the target customers and their underserved needs. Our role was to bridge the gap between the problem and solution space by aligning stakeholders on the platform’s vision and roadmap before moving into prototyping and testing.
I approached my work with the following mindset:
Reframe the Perspective: Given that we were not yet in the build phase of the solution, I was encouraged to think big when exploring the art of the possible. Throughout the project, I positioned the airport eCommerce experience through the lens of a next-gen digital marketplace rather than a transportation hub. This perspective expanded my analysis into adjacent offerings from the world’s top venues, marketplaces, and shopping malls, allowing me to cross-pollinate ideas and practices from these domains.
Think One Layer Deeper: While eCommerce is typically seen as buying something from an online store, there are, in reality, many underlying mechanisms to delivering customer and business value (marketing, content, fulfillment, targeting/retargeting, etc.) To challenge pre-existing assumptions, I dug deep into the factors enabling these experiences to educate the client on the possibilities of eCommerce beyond retail transactions.
My Process
A. Build Context
To better understand the opportunity, I first conducted a market scan of the world’s top digital experiences and documented the factors contributing to their success. These insights provided our team with a perspective on the leading practices and table stakes required to launch an eCommerce offering in the airport business.
Next, we merged the insights from our competitive analysis and customer research to develop a unified narrative on the eCommerce opportunities available to the client. My work in this phase helped build conviction that our recommendations were grounded on industry-proven strategies.
B. Design and Validate
I came out of the context phase with a hypothesis of opportunities and features for the eCommerce platform. However, before presenting these ideas, we had to structure our findings in a format that could stimulate further discussion and brainstorming (aka the art of client facilitation).
To accomplish this, I designed an end-to-end journey map to visually highlight all of the possible airport interaction points that digital commerce could enable and enhance. We then validated the flow through an executive workshop with the client, who provided input into their desired features and clarified where there were overlaps and distinctions between services. For instance, a technical configuration that could support pre-purchasing parking would not be extensible to buying duty-free items in the terminal or pre-ordering food before the flight.
C. Prioritize and Align
After receiving approval on the target state experience, I consolidated the items from the journey map and scored them on a weighted model that considered desirability, feasibility, and viability. I then categorized these scores based on priority for the product roadmap, identifying the eCommerce opportunities that were low-hanging fruit and features that required more advanced capabilities for implementation.
D. Document
At this stage, we had defined the “what” of the eCommerce strategy but not the “how.” To enable the customer journey, I worked with our functional lead to facilitate stakeholder discussions and document technical requirements for capabilities like product catalog management, multi-vendor orchestration, payments, and order management. I also led an investigation into tech stacks that could support the platform, evaluating their buyer-facing features for eCommerce and seller-facing features for marketplace management.
My Impact
My work on this project culminated in the delivery of a strategy playbook and requirements documentation, which was positively received by the client’s leadership team. These artifacts unified multiple revenue streams and business objectives, pushing forward an initiative poised to generate $XXXM in non-aeronautical revenue over the next decade.
To recap my impact by the numbers:
Developed competitive profiles for 15 leading eCommerce experiences, capturing the nuances of 80+ distinct on-site and off-site revenue streams, including digital channels, buyer journeys, and fulfillment models.
Defined the platform’s vision statement, business case, and value proposition, distilling 70+ features into a prioritized roadmap distributed across 3 time horizons.
Wrote 150+ specs (user stories, requirements, and business rules) across 9 commerce dimensions to clarify the platform’s configuration, supporting technologies, and implementation plan.
III. Reflections
Takeaways
Generating Momentum: One of the core skills I learned was how to summarize large amounts of unstructured research into actionable insights, and presenting it in a format that sparks meaningful discussion while inspiring net new ideas.
Thinking, Fast and Slow: Throughout the project, I encountered moments that required broad, expansive thinking, such as brainstorming quality of life improvements that I would personally enjoy at the airport. In contrast, writing user stories and business rules required a more nuanced approach. I learned how to recognize and leverage the appropriate thought process—whether fast and creative or slow and methodical—depending on the task at hand.
Being Less Precious About the Details: For the more challenging elements of the requirements stream (e.g., user access management, unified cart, invoicing), I had less certainty about the work I produced. To ensure I was aligned with my team’s expectations, I scheduled more frequent review cycles while focusing less on perfecting all of my work at once.
Conclusion
As one of the first strategy engagements in my portfolio, this project taught me how to develop compelling narratives and think critically about what enables world-class experiences. It also provided front-row seats for observing the process that leadership teams take to craft a 0-to-1 vision at scale.
This form of consulting, known as Customer Experience (CX) Design, operates at a higher level of abstraction than User Experience (UX) Design. If you are looking for a more tactical example of my design work, check out my UBDI case study here.
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