Marketing and the Public Dimension of Museums: Creating Dialogue, Interaction and Meaning

Brian Hogarth

《National Palace Museum Bulletin》 39期 (2006/12) Pp. 5-28

摘要

This paper explores new ways of thinking about marketing in museums. To what extent can marketing support the long-term mission of the museum and help build sustainable public support? How can various communities become more involved in what the museum plans and produces? How do marketing, mission and community interact in ways that promote dialogue, interaction and meaning?Marketing practices in museums have traditionally focused on driving attendance through advertising, packaging, and branding the museum as an image and/or destination. The museum ‘product’ is developed internally, and then marketing is expected to ‘sell’ the product to a largely approving audience. Education programs are ‘added on’ to help explain or enliven the product for the general public. This topdown approach works well for maintaining a core audience that is already committed to the museum. But it will be less successful at expanding and diversifying the museum’s potential audience. Visitors to museums are increasingly diverse and expect to interact with the museum in different ways. They want the museum to reflect the broader community and to make the museum’s collections and informational resources more accessible. Visitors want to be active participants, not just passive attendees.Can marketing help the museum evolve from a repository of collections experienced largely through controlled and specialized frameworks, to a place of dialogue, where culture is explored, meanings and perceptions are challenged and debated and where our essential humanity (rather than the specific subjects of the museum) is affirmed? With this goal in mind, can marketing, along with other museum staff, engage community representatives and visitors of many backgrounds and interests as participants who actually help to shape and define museum exhibitions and programs?This paper does not address specific marketing activities such as advertising and promotions, public relations, and visitor surveys. Rather, it concentrates on the larger relationship between marketing, visitors and the museum as a whole. We begin by defining marketing, market segmentation and the concept of the market-driven or servicedriven organization. Can new business models emphasizing customer service be applied to museums? Can museums develop content that engages different market segments? How might the new “digital marketplace” affect the way museums communicate with their audiences? Does the current emphasis on architectural remodeling address visitor service and audience development issues? We conclude by listing a variety of programs from different museums (mostly art and history museums in the United States and Canada) that can serve as models for increasing interaction, collaboration and meaning with visitors.