The Marketing Paradox of Involuntary Consumption

Marketing a product that consumers do not actively choose—like an airport—requires shifting focus from traditional acquisition to holistic experience design. For operators in high-traffic, low-choice industries, the primary lever for competitive advantage is no longer awareness, but the emotional resonance of the transition point itself.

What Happened

Shalini Rao, CMO of Bangalore International Airport Limited (BIAL), recently detailed the strategy behind managing one of India’s most critical transit hubs. Despite air travel being a forced choice for passengers, BIAL serves as a benchmark for experience-led operations. The airport managed over 41 million passengers in the 2024-25 fiscal year, maintaining an 11.6% year-on-year growth trajectory while connecting to 75 domestic and 30 international destinations.

Why It Matters

First-order: Airports are pivoting from utility-based infrastructure to experiential service providers. By treating the physical terminal as a brand touchpoint rather than a transit container, operators can increase non-aeronautical revenue through dwell-time optimization.

Second-order: This model applies to any high-volume, mandatory-service business (healthcare facilities, utilities, DMV-adjacent services). If the user cannot avoid your service, the battle shifts from ‘acquisition’ to ‘Net Promoter Score (NPS) retention,’ where friction reduction becomes a core marketing KPI.

Third-order: The maturation of ‘invisible’ services—services where the goal is to be frictionlessly consumed—will demand that operators integrate FMCG-scale data analytics with hospitality-grade customer success. The winners in the next 24 months will be those who treat operations and marketing as a unified product experience.

The Numbers

  • 41 million passengers handled in FY 2024-25 (Source: BIAL)
  • 11.6% Year-on-year growth in passenger traffic (Source: BIAL)

What To Watch

  • Increased investment in IoT and biometric identity to reduce dwell-time friction.
  • Shifts in retail mix toward hyper-local, experience-based concessions that drive non-aeronautical spend.
  • Data-driven personalization at scale, leveraging FMCG-style consumer insights for transit populations.