From product-oriented flight providers to customer-centric retailers: a dynamic offering framework and implementation guidelines for airlines

Industry insiders and analysts see dynamic offering—a highly responsive and customer-centric approach to offer design mirroring the practices of online retailers—as a viable instrument in airlines’ quest to regain profitability and maintain relevance in the digitalizing environment. While promising, adopting dynamic offering would also require a major overhaul of airlines’ technologies-in-use, as well as their organizational structures and processes in order to overcome the rigidities and limitations from today’s pre-defined fare-based offer creation. This paper synthesizes relevant concepts of offer management, outlines airlines’ key challenges to offer management adoption and suggests guidelines for airlines’ transition from pure flight providers to ‘airline retailers’ along six imperatives.