By Neil Kotler

This article was published in Museum News, May/June 1999.

Museum administrators often underestimate the value of their institutions' offerings. They focus on collections and exhibitions and overlook the possibility that visitors may also seek a contemplative space; a sociable encounter; a distinctive shopping experience; or a place where a family can spend quality time together. In fact, visitors may seek all of these benefits in a single visit. If staff were to recognize the full range of benefits their museums offer, they would likely communicate the museum-going experience in a more compelling way, reach more effectively different segments of their audience, and establish a reputation for their museums as enjoyable places to visit on a regular basis.

Museum professionals recognize that museums, as recreational and educational organizations, operate in a marketplace alongside competitors. The focus on visitors as consumers is spreading, and museum officials are seeking better ways to provide consumer value and utilize marketing tools to accomplish their 30 goals. Building consumer value depends on research on visitor needs (those that have not been met by other organizations). Many museums are reaping the benefits of marketing and communications; they are drawing record crowds and generating unprecedented visibility. In the coming years, museums will have to design a broad array of offerings, identify and respond to needs of different visitor segments, get visitors to spend more time and visit more often, and build durable relationships with their audiences and communities. This article develops a conceptual framework that centers on the range of experiences museums can offer visitors. It can be used to generate research on visitor behavior, test hypotheses, and provide a set of yardsticks by which museum managers can assess their performance in relation to their audiences. To be sure, museums vary in their goals, scale, and resources. Different elements in the framework will be of value to different types of museums.

Art museums in Western countries have their antecedents in the collections amassed by monarchs, nobility, and the Roman Catholic Church during the Middle Ages and the early modern period. Natural history museums developed out of research projects, fieldwork, and expeditions that amassed collections of natural specimens and cultural artifacts. In fact, for much of their history, museums have been repositories of art, history, nature, science, and technology. Their core activity was the acquisition, care, and presentation of collections. They catered to specialized audiences-scholars, collectors, connoisseurs, and high-status, affluent, and educated segments of the population. In the early 20th century, leaders like John Cotton Dana at the Newark Museum in Newark, N.J., began to articulate a new educational mission for museums as places where young people and adults could learn visual skills; study design, crafts, and material culture; and investigate history, art, nature, and science. Museum objects became vehicles for learning about the world. The focus on education grew alongside the focus on collections. As long as collections were the principal focus, curators and scholars were the sole authoritative voices. Once an educational role developed, other professionals joined with curators in shaping museum goals and activities.

In more recent years, the focus on collections and education has been joined by a focus on museum-going experiences. This has given the public a greater voice in determining what museums offer since the visitor is the ultimate judge of his or her own experience. Collections and exhibitions still occupy the central place, but they are surrounded more and more by contextual and interpretive materials, storytelling, and exploration of the meaning of objects. As a result, visitors feel better informed about, more connected to, and better able to participate in museums. They seek experiences in their museum visits, and they rate the success of their visit according to the quality of their experiences. And these experiences go beyond viewing objects, acquiring information, and being on site. Experiencing connotes active engagement (direct observation of or participation in an event), immediacy (knowing something through sensory stimuli), individuality (something that is lived through), and intense, memorable, or unusual encounters. Thus collection-centered museums evolved into education-centered museums and, later, into experience centered museums. Each stage incorporated the previous one. Some museum professionals regard the embrace of an audience focus and the use of communications and marketing tools as tantamount to sacrilege and subversion. In their minds, the distance between education and serious pursuit, on the one hand, and entertainment and recreation, on the other, is unbridgeable. Defining education and entertainment as opposite ideas is short sighted. Indeed many museum staff are finding ways to strengthen core museum activities with broader leisure offerings. They take inspiration from the 18th-century American portrait painter and pioneering museum leader Charles Willson Peale, who coined the phrase "rational entertainment" to describe the distinctive effect of his museum's offerings on visitors. For Peale, rational entertainment was more than simple amusement and diversion; it encompassed both enjoyment and edification. Entertainment, after all, can range from the emotional highs and thrills found at Disney parks to the more cerebral highs embodied in the curiosity, wonderment, and learning that occur at museums. Institutions can derive benefit from assessing their programs in the light of the spectrum of recreational experiences available to people-from thrill and adventure, play, and fun to musing, pondering, observing, and skill-building-and offering visitors a distinctive combination of experiences (see figure 1).

Over the years, visitors have come to expect a broader range of experiences from museums. They do not simply expect instruction, though educational activities rank high. They also want to satisfy social aims, enjoy carefree and relaxing recreational experiences, and encounter things that make them feel good about their communities and themselves. People who visit museums are not a homogeneous group. They bring a range of motivations, knowledge, and expectations. Museum visits are typically self-initiated and self-structured. But the circumstances of the visits vary. Some are products of a well-thought out excursion and itinerary; others, chance happenings that may be caused by weather and proximity. Nevertheless, surveys consistently indicate that for most people museum visits are first and foremost recreational activities. Recreational visitors tend to seek a variety of experiences. Indeed, because museum visits can be taxing, involve a range of unusual sensory stimuli and sensory overload, and require considerable standing and walking, visitors are likely to offset gallery visits by taking time out to sit and relax, dine, or shop.

Most visitors to museums arrive as part of a social group, often as a family. Family visits can form part of an extended outing. As such, the quality of the visit is influenced by the quality of access and services, the time involved in and cost of transportation, availability of parking, and convenience of access to the museum building, as well as the exhibits. Children require services that other visitors do not. They will want to hunt around for new things, while their parents probably prefer a structured learning experience. Children may be inclined to run off on their own, while their parents will want the family to enjoy experiences together. Many parents are searching for ways to satisfy their children's kinetic, interactive, and tactile needs.¹ Museum visits are social activities. Between 1994 and 1996, the Smithsonian's Office of Institutional Studies surveyed visitors to the three largest Smithsonian museums and found that 75 percent of visitors (excluding school groups) came as a social group, i.e., accompanied by children or other adults. Of that number, 36 percent visited in a group, usually a family unit, that included adults and children. ² Visitors may be groups of friends who meet for lunch in a museum restaurant and later visit a gallery; intimate friends who seek a place of privacy and anonymity; parents who bring their young children together for a group activity in a safe space; or business travelers who join colleagues for an outing. For visitors in groups especially, recreational experience should include diversion, dining, and shopping.

Given the disparate needs and expectations of visitors, museums have to provide a variety of engaging activities. Visitors expect recreational types of experience that are relaxing and playful, involve learning, and provide them with unusual encounters and an escape from the routines of work and everyday life. Museums can offer a range of experiences that include visual and sensory experiences, learning, recreation, sociability, and celebratory and enchanting experiences.

Revered objects in history museums, for example, can generate memorable, transcendent experiences. The Smithsonian's 150th anniversary traveling exhibition in 1996 included President Lincoln's top hat, which he likely wore on the evening he was assassinated. In interviews, visitors talked about their profound sense of reverence for and emotional bonding with Lincoln's hat and the other objects, what it meant to be in their presence, and the extent to which the exhibition strengthened their sense of heritage and civic pride. Museum visitors seek celebratory experiences. They want to honor great figures and events; engage in creative expression and the creative genius of a great artist; bond with objects and stories that reflect their heritage as well as those that have historical significance; and bask in the intellectual challenges surrounding technological and scientific achievements. Visitors at art museums report that they can soar to heights of rapture and enchantment at extraordinary exhibitions. Celebration and awe, so wanting in the mass media, can be the defining and distinctive experience museums offer.

Depending on their knowledge of a museum's subject matter, visitors also look for a variety of ways to encounter objects and exhibitions. There are different levels of museum-going experience that respond to different learning and perceptual modes. Visitors may go to museums simply to view the objects and the designed environments. Viewing objects can involve a superficial glance or a high level of engagement, as measured by the time spent in exhibits and the intensity of focus and concentration. At a deeper level, visitors can take advantage of interpretive and narrative materials that include labels, texts, film and video, and computer databases. Museums increasingly are providing interactive and virtual reality experiences as supplements to exhibits. The National Gallery of Art's 1999 exhibition, "Edo: Art in Japan, 1615-1868," offered visitors a series of interactive computer screens with interpretive and narrative materials. One screen enabled visitors to simulate travel through Edo (the 18th-century precursor to Tokyo) and view the layout of streets, neighborhoods, and public, commercial, and residential architecture. A second computer screen showed visitors dances and musical and theatrical performances in traditional Japanese culture. A third demonstrated and interpreted religious ceremonies. Museum exhibits also can provide immersion experiences. Visitors at the Philadelphia Museum of Art can tour various period rooms-designed environments that depict different cultures and historical periods. These include a Japanese teahouse, a southern Indian temple, a Buddhist temple, and an 18th-century grand salon in a Parisian hotel.

Visitors to the First Division Museum at Cantigny in Wheaton, Ill., encounter objects and exhibits in a variety of ways. The museum, located 50 miles west of Chicago, is devoted to the wartime experiences of the U.S. Army First Infantry Division. Vintage tanks and other pieces of military equipment from the two world wars are situated in a park outside the museum. There are few labels in the park, but inside the museum, exhibits of war-related events and military accomplishments are richly interpreted in a series of galleries. In the newest section, visitors can walk through a World War I battlefield trench, listen to the sounds of a battle, and hear and see the travail and suffering of soldiers. They also can walk through a French village just after a bombing raid, and imagine civilian suffering during wartime.

At a more intensive level, museums help visitors develop skills that they can apply to other situations. Students at a science center try out experiments that they can replicate and refine in their school laboratories. Students in art museums encounter visual learning experiences and strategies that they can use to understand computer art, design, and images in advertising. At the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C., students can visit exhibits dealing with urban design and architecture, and then go to a computer screen and build a bridge, construct a house, or design a city.

Robert Sullivan, associate director for public programs at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, Washington, D.C., says the following about the image and experiences his museum is striving to communicate: "The end-product of the museum is not simply viewing an exhibit. A more fundamental outcome is to change a visitor's awareness and knowledge so that years afterwards he or she can recall the experience as a significant one. We provide a variety of learning opportunities to help people change and enlarge their perceptions."³ What kinds of experiences do museums offer that are distinctive and not offered by other recreational providers? Figure 1 shows a range of visceral, emotional, and intellectual experiences that people can have during a leisure activity. Museum visitors seek experiences that cross the boundaries of seeing, learning, and doing. Over the course of a single day, they are quite capable of absorbing thrills and excitement, relaxing, and then finding delight in aesthetic pleasures and intellectual discoveries. As much as possible, museums should provide multiple experiences.

But as museums expand their offerings, they will have to grapple with issues of mission, distinctiveness, and competitive advantage. In the course of a self-assessment, one museum may discover that, based on its resources and audience, the best experiences it can offer are a combination of learning and contemplation. A second museum may conclude it excels at combining immersion experiences, playful activity, and discovery experiences. Uncovering a museum's distinctive offering, along a spectrum of recreational experiences, helps establish a recognizable position in the marketplace, which, like brand images, has competitive advantages.

At the same time, museums have to combine their distinctive, standout offerings with variety and range and the types of services that different visitor segments and a broad-base audience expect. Not enough museums mine the narratives embedded in their objects and collections or exploit the assets of having unusual, historic, or grandly designed environments, where people can stroll, relax, and immerse themselves in novel settings. It may take the combined effort of writers, filmmakers, storytellers, and curators to unearth the scope, depth, and range of museums' symbolic and iconographic riches. The challenge is to communicate the full range of offerings to the public and identify and respond to the needs of different segments of the audience. Museums should periodically assessthe extent to which they are offering visitors variety and quality.

Museums are responding to the array of visitor expectations, just as they are responding to the pressures of competition and the need for earned income. The combination in museums of objects, exhibits, designed environments, and services such as restaurants and gift shops has been copied by the commercial entertainment industry. Disney, Discovery Channel Destination Store, theme restaurants like the Rainforest Cafe, and sports arenas such as Washington, D.C.'s MCI Center, have added objects, exhibitions, designed environments, and other sensory experiences to their main commercial activities.

The heightened attention to visitor experiences has encouraged museums to focus on museum-going as an exchange process rather than a hierarchical relationship between experts and the uninitiated or a one-way didactic process between teachers and students (see figure 2). Exchange lies at the core of marketing, and marketing knowledge has enabled museums to deepen their appreciation for exchange relationships. As a form of exchange, museums have to consider the cost incurred by visitors versus the benefits they derive. Visitors have to weigh a particular museum's advantages against the advantages of its competitors.

Museums continually have to ask themselves four questions in relation to their exchanges with audiences and develop strategies to address each issue. First, how do we increase the time visitors normally spend in our museum (recognizing that spending more time is equivalent to spending more income and giving greater support over the long-run)? Second, how are first-time or infrequent visitors persuaded to become regular, active visitors and then members? A variation of this question is: how do we get people who only attend blockbuster shows to participate routinely? Third, how do we draw more visitors to the museum during off-hour periods and off-seasons so that visits can be more equally allocated throughout the year? Fourth, how can the museum attract groups of people who rarely visit, particularly members of ethnic groups and social classes who are unaware of the benefits museums offer or don't feel encouraged to visit?

To increase the length of a visitor's stay, museums have broadened the range of services they provide as well as the variety of collections and exhibits. There are four main types of services: physical comfort and accessibility (welldesigned galleries, lighted and safe parking lots, ramps, seating and rest areas, clean restrooms, etc.); hospitality (welcoming behavior on the part of guides, guards, and other employees); interpretive, narrative, and way-finding information (including the use of different media) that increase a visitor's awareness and knowledge; and recreation and diversion, including shops and dining facilities. Museums are providing greater variety, such as library and electronic-learning facilities, folding chairs for the galleries, multiple restaurants with different cuisines, specialty gift shops, and family activity areas and rest stops. The Art Institute of Chicago, for example, offers a dazzling array of high-quality merchandise in its shops and culinary experiences in its restaurants in addition to world-class art. Museum services can be the foundation for satisfying visits.

Figure 2 illustrates the museum visitor exchange process. The first column lists the variety of elements that generate museum offerings. The second column illustrates the ratio of benefits and costs and identifies the ways visitors process museum experiences. These are the channels of learning and perceiving that museums provide. In the third column are the categories of experience in which museum-goers partake.

Expanding the variety of a museum's offerings, increasing the frequency of new exhibits, including modest-scale exhibits drawn from permanent collections, and organizing special events are marketing strategies for building active museum audiences. Events play a significant role in expanding audiences and converting infrequent visitors to regular, active ones. Major historical museums, such as the Genesee Country Village & Museums in Mumford, N.Y., and Conner Prairie in Fishers, Ind., offer a broad array of commemorative, holiday, seasonal, and festive events that draw large, regular audiences. Building an image of a museum as a place to enjoy year-round and not simply to visit periodically for special exhibitions helps develop active audiences. The Memorial Art Gallery at the University of Rochester, N.Y., for example, opens its doors on Friday evenings once a month to approximately 1,500 young professionals, who socialize in the galleries, enjoy drinks and light meals, and listen to jazz concerts and lectures. A committee of professionals oversees the events and, in addition, organizes fundraising auctions to support the collections. The museum has succeeded in attracting younger visitors and members and performing a service for the community. Even as exhibit halls, museums have stretched the boundaries of presentation. New York's Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum drew a huge audience to its summer 1998 show, "The Art of the Motorcycle." The exhibition introduced visitors to novel forms of art and design and attracted a substantial number of firsttime museum-goers.

Museums that are open most days of the week seek ways to attract visitors during slack periods and off-seasons and also lessen crowds during peak periods. Strategies include increasing the frequency of new exhibits during off-seasons, working with tourism organizations to attract tours in off periods, and offering incentives, such as discounts on entrance and special exhibition fees and in restaurants and gift shops, that encourage targeted segments to participate at desired times.

Museums are increasingly aware that their community obligations involve reaching underserved groups, helping communities articulate a sense of identity and purpose, and making themselves relevant to varied community interests and needs. This includes reaching out to segments of the population that do not typically visit museums; removing psychic and physical barriers that discourage visits; building appreciation for art, history, natural history, and science among young people; and offering adults continuing education and social opportunities. Strategies that attract young people are an effective way of building community support. For example, the Newark Museum has organized an array of programs that cater to different age groups of young people: nature camps for young children; art shows and afterschool programs for elementary and middle-school aged students; and science clubs for older students. The Walker Art Center in Minneapolis offers rich educational options for families with children that include handson art workshops, theatrical performances, musical concerts, and art clubs. Indeed, museums like the Walker have hired staff to satisfy the needs of disparate and distinct visitor groups.

This discussion would not be complete without mention of the issues that small museums are facing. They do not enjoy the large audiences and visibilityof large museums. They face the obstacles of location and scale and have to struggle for resources, visibility, and audience. To put themselves on the map, small museums have to raise visibility and communicate their value to their communities. One strategy that is proving effective is for small museums to band together. Museums in northern Wisconsin, for example, created a brochure with a colorful map showing the locations of dozens of small museums, along with itineraries and routes that tourists and travelers can use to visit multiple sites in a few days, over several days, or during daylong excursions. Collaboration among museums in Providence, R.I., has generated a critical mass of offerings in a downtown cultural district that has raised visibility, attracted a broad audience, and extended the time people spend in cultural activities. This collaboration also has aroused media and developer interest and spurred tourism. The Springfield/Greene County (Missouri) Historical Museum is collaborating with a local dinner theater and performing arts group to organize events that are entertaining and reinforce the sense of community.

Statistics show that U.S. museums are expanding in number and size. Audiences, too, are larger than ever, although questions can be raised about the accuracy of audience counts.⁴ Yet the statistics largely reflect the fortunes of large, urban institutions rather than the great majority of museums, those that are small and medium-sized. Regardless of size, museums can benefit by adopting a consumer focus, providing a greater range of offerings, and striving to satisfy the needs of visitors.

Museums that aim to build a broader audience and develop a consumer focus can undertake a process of strategic marketing planning. The planning process involves several basic steps that depend heavily on visitor and market research:

1) assess the museum's strengths and weaknesses as well as external opportunities and competitive threats;

2) determine the target segments and audience mix the museum is seeking to reach;

3) determine which needs visitors want to satisfy in their museum visits-needs that may not be satisfied by other cultural and recreational providers and which needs the museum can best respond to, given its resources;

4) design offerings to meet audience needs;

5) determine the museum's distinctive position in the marketplace and communicate an attractive image accordingly;

6) set goals and means to measure goal achievement; and

7) develop a strategy to reach the goals.

In most instances, museums are organized as nonprofit institutions. They depend both on the revenues that visitors produce and on broader public support, sanctioned by governments in the form of tax deductions, elimination of real estate and user taxes, and other privileges and subsidies. In return, museums have a public responsibility to educate and make richer the cultural and civic life that exists in communities. Wider use of marketing practices has led museums to focus on the outcomes of their activities, and this, in turn, reinforces their accountability, which tax codes and regulations aim to uphold. Museums are public goods that provide considerable value so long as they tap their full potential. The marriage of core activities, services, and an array of experiences enlarges the museum-going experience for all visitors.⁵

References

1. See discussion with G. Donald Adams on family visits in Neil Kotler and Philip Kotler, Museum Strategy and Marketing: Designing Missions, Building Audiences, Generating Revenue and Resources (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, Inc., 1998), pp. 114, 175.

2. Z. D. Doering, A. Bickford, and A. J. Pekarik, Visitors to the Smithsonian Institution: A Summary of Studies, Report 97-3, April 1997, p. 10. See also J. Falk and L. Dierking, The Museum Experience (Washington, D.C.: Whalesback Books, 1992).

3. Interview by author, Washington, D.C., Jan. 20, 1999.

4. See Jane Lusaka and John Strand, "The Boom-And What To Do About It," Museum News, November/December 1998, pp. 55-60.

5. Stephen E. Weil, "Creampuffs and Hardball: Are You Really Worth What You Cost?" Museum News, September/October 1994, pp. 42-43, 60, 62.

Figure 2:  Museums and Audiences: The Exchange Process
Museum Offerings   Designed environment Collections Exhibits Programs Events Membership activities Shops Restaurants Web site Other services	<------- Museum	Benefits to museum Support, revenue, gifts   Costs to visitors Time, expense, comfort   Costs to museum Salaries, operations   Benefits to visitor perceptual/educational benefits sensory stimuli, information, narratives, meanings, affect, interactivity, motor activity	Visitor ------>	Visitor Expectations & Experiences Visual/sensory Recreation Sociability Learning Celebration Enchantment

Neil G. Kotler is co-author (with Philip Kotler) of Museum Strategy and Marketing: Designing Missions, Building Audiences, Generating Revenue and Resources (San Francisco: Joseey-Bass, Inc., 1998). He is a program specialist at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.