Airlines were urged to take inspiration from politics by exploiting nudge behaviour to transform the passenger experience.

Speaking the Passenger Experience Conference ahead of Aircraft Interiors Expo (AIX) in Hamburg, Simon Nowroz, chief strategy officer of Beyond said airlines need ‘small data’.

The digital services company works with clients to design, build and operate data products and Nowroz was talking about harnessing the power of data.

“Small behavioural changes lead to big results,” he said. “We would suggest that nudging consumers in to certain behaviours will become big for the industry.”

Nowroz said while there has been a lot of talk about ‘big data’ this has become commoditised and having access to large ‘data lakes’ is now table stakes for all companies.

“Now what’s really insightful is small data. Imagine if you now more about that individual aircraft, that individual traveller. What do we know about individuals’ behaviours?”

Focussing on small data is “going to be invaluable” as firms pursue growth and innovation opportunities, Nowroz added.

He used the example of the invention of the drug Viagra by Pfizer as an example of the often “crazy road” to innovation.

The drug was originally developed to treat heart issues but after it was discovered in testing to have no impact researchers decided to ask those in the tests about their experiences.

These interviews took place not in labs but in the homes of the people who took part in the original trials.

Nowroz said the lessons from this were that innovation happened when you take yourself to the consumers. This is known as “retail on the edge”, he said.

“We are strong believers in meeting consumers where they are. That’s why sentiment data is so important because we are getting customers to tell us what they feel in their own words.”

Beyond is using machine learning and natural language processing to generate sentiment analysis and Nowroz said the technologies is uses is now capable of understanding sarcasm.

The firm is also using facial recognition to determine what people are really thinking beyond what they say and has developed its own in-house programmes.

This places a value on the words and phrases people used to describe their experiences and turns them into actionable insights.

“The magic source is understanding how to build the prompts and understand the prompts,” said Nowroz.