When the mall is in the airport: Measuring the effect of the airport mall on passengers’ consumer behavior

Abstract

This paper provides a new approach to evaluating the influence on passenger F&B consumption and expenditure of terminals that approximate to the concept of an airport shopping mall. Using a broad database of 37,226 passengers interviewed at eight different Spanish airports, including two Spanish hub airports, Madrid-Barajas and Barcelona, with a methodology framed within statistical causal inference with Kernel and Radial matching, the results robustly demonstrate that passengers alter their consumption behavior in hub airport malls compared to how they behave at regional airports with a smaller commercial and F&B offer. Specifically, there is an increase of between 3.7 and 4.1% in the likelihood that hub passengers will make a consumption and between 1.2 and 1.3% in the likelihood that they will make a purchase, while mean per-passenger spending increases by 3.53€.