Dufry Case Study

What Strategies Enabled a Leading Duty-Free Retailer to Optimize Shelf Layouts and Increase Profitability?

Customer Profile

Our customer in this study is a prominent global travel retailer with an extensive international presence. Operating in over 50 countries and managing approximately 400 locations, our client maintains a significant footprint with around 2,200 shops situated in airports, cruise liners, seaports, and other tourist destinations. Nexgen POG has been a trusted partner for over a decade, aiding retailers, and manufacturers worldwide in creating store-specific planograms that drive sales and revenue.

The Business Challenge

The world-class one-stop tax- and duty-free group is one of the leading airport food and beverage operators worldwide, with more than 1,000 suppliers at value-based prices in a convenient location for travelers. Since duty-free retail presents unique challenges compared to conventional retail stores, such as navigating complex regulatory restrictions and the need to highlight value propositions to attract international travelers in transit areas, it requires specialized strategies to effectively engage this transient customer base.


Despite their strategic locations and broad product assortment, our client struggled to optimize sales and draw customer traffic in their European stores. The challenge was to use strategic shelf planning to make stores more engaging and efficient, thereby increasing both sales and profitability.


Our client needed a solution that could tailor their store layouts to better meet the preferences of their diverse clientele and optimize the placement of their premium local and global brands. Implementing Nexgen POG helped the client by addressing several key challenges associated with duty-free retail.

Solution Through Nexgen POG

Using Nexgen POG helped our client improve their store layouts and product placements in European locations. It allowed them to do precise and strategic shelf planning, considering factors such as product visibility, customer flow, and purchasing behavior. This optimization enabled our client to enhance the attractiveness of their stores to travelers, ensuring that high-demand and high-margin products were prominently displayed and easily accessible. Key features of Nexgen POG that contributed to the solution included:

  • Customized planograms: Tailoring store layouts to specific locations and customer demographics.
  • Dynamic adjustments: Real-time updates to accommodate seasonal changes and promotional activities.
  • Enhanced visibility: Strategic placement of products at eye level and high-traffic areas to attract more shoppers.
  • Planogram automation: Streamlines creation and updates, reducing manual effort and ensuring consistent implementation across locations.
  • Real-time performance tracking: Using planogram reports to monitor sales and customer interactions, enabling adjustments to optimize product placement.
  • Multi-store coordination: Coordinates planogram strategies across locations for consistent layouts with customizable local adjustments.
  • User-friendly interface: Provides an intuitive interface that simplifies planogram creation helping store managers quickly optimize layouts.

Results & Impacts

The implementation of Nexgen POG led to notable improvements in the client’s European stores:

  • Increase in sales: The strategic placement and enhanced visibility of products resulted in a significant increase in sales, as travelers were more likely to purchase high-margin items that were prominently displayed.
  • Increase in customer traffic: Optimized store layouts attracted more shoppers, boosting foot traffic and increasing the overall number of visitors to the stores.
  • Improved profitability: The combination of increased sales and higher customer traffic contributed to a marked improvement in profitability, reflecting the effectiveness of Nexgen POG in driving financial success.

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