According to Advantage International Group, more than half of the industry anticipates that collaboration between vendors and operators will greatly improve in the next year.

 

The Advantage report, which surveyed 451 retail operators and 468 suppliers serving the DF&TR industry, suggests that both stakeholder groups are equally aligned in their thoughts on future collaboration.

 

“Sixty percent of the respondents from travel retail operators look forward to an improvement in their collaboration with their vendors,” says Advantage. “Fifty-five percent of the respondents from the vendor community expressed a positive outlook for their collaboration with retailers.”

 

In addition, approximately 28% of vendors and operators expect things to remain the same and a small percentage (less than 10%) from both sides of the business expect collaboration to somewhat worsen. Almost none anticipate significant decline.

 

Nestor Sanajko, Senior Manager, Global Business Development at Advantage comments on the results: “This is a positive announcement from the industry, and not surprising after the challenges in the past years.

“There have been other indicators of the industry’s positive outlook, such as ACI’s increasing global passenger traffic trends as well as Erik Juul-Mortensen’s optimism in his annual state of the industry address at the TFWA in Cannes.”

 

Advantage conducts industry intelligence surveys with 500 retailers worldwide and provides insights to over 500 sponsors around the world.

“Our surveys examine over 30 practice areas across a selection of key participants (executive and senior management, category management, and inventory & logistics),” says the company.

 

“We provide qualitative research based on our interviews to help clients understand the ‘why’ behind ratings and rankings they receive. We provide feedback to suppliers from retailers and to retailers from suppliers.

 

For more information on the 2017 Advantage Report, contact Nestor Sanajko at [email protected].