A newly released study from the Tax Free World Association shows that jewelry brands can benefit from travel-specific forms of retail

A watches and jewelry report unveiled this week by the Tax Free World Association (TFWA) is part of the group’s Category Reports series and aims to show the power of duty-free and travel retail for the jewelry industry.

Produced for TFWA by Counter Intelligence Retail, the report is based on replies from approximately 1,000 shopper interviews conducted at four key airports across the globe. Fifty percent of respondents were duty-free buyers who offered up some intriguing buying statistics. Among them: 78 percent of shoppers buying for themselves said that they had purchased a brand they do not usually buy, 40 percent purchased the brand for the first time, and seven in 10 buyers had no prior awareness of the brand. This data shows that travel retail and duty-free shops can provide exposure to new audiences and can also be an ideal place to up sell shoppers, considering that one in five is trading up purchases from usual domestic product ranges and brands. One in two watch and jewelry buyers purchased items for themselves while almost one in every two purchases were bought as gifts.

“The watches and jewelry category in global duty-free and travel retail was valued at $5.7 billion in 2015,” says TFWA president Erik Juul-Mortensen. “However the sector needs to do more to turn the very substantial amount of watches and jewelry browsers into buyers as currently about one in seven airport shoppers visit the category, but only 5 percent buy.”

Log onto Tfwa.com to see the full report.

JCK