Thesis
Marketing Scotland's museums and galleries
- Creator
- Rights statement
- Awarding institution
- University of Strathclyde
- Date of award
- 1992
- Thesis identifier
- T7197
- Qualification Level
- Qualification Name
- Department, School or Faculty
- Abstract
- The objective of this research is to document sound marketing practice in Scotland's museums and galleries. This research was undertaken due to the increasing interest in marketing by museums themselves, and by those who fund museums. Before the research began there was a suspicion that the transfer of consumer goods marketing concepts to museums might be inappropriate, and that there was a lack of empirically based studies of marketing in museums. The literature review confirmed these suspicions. An explanatory approach using qualitative methods was therefore appropriate. Examples of sound museum marketing practice were identified by use of a panel of experts. The research was essentially an ethnographic study of what curators (managers) in the successful museums actually do. Whilst the techniques used are well established in many of the social sciences they are less common both in marketing and in museum studies. The research also made use of "Ethnograph" software for the analysis of interview data, one of the first occasions this has been done in marketing research in the UK. The research revealed an inductively derived model identifying three important areas that successful museum curators have to attend to, namely, the management of the museum, the management of its reputation, and the management of its relationships with the museum's patron (funding) groups. It is this latter split that provides the key difference between museum marketing and commercial marketing. The research went on to discover how these three categories are dynamically related in a "spiral of success", and how the model can be used as a diagnostic tool to identify areas requiring attention. The other principal findings relate to the characteristics of successful curators. The research has implications for policy in areas including training, and the whole relationship between museums and those who fund them. In particular the idea that marketing will necessarily make money for museums is refuted.
- Resource Type
- DOI
- EThOS ID
- uk.bl.ethos.387116
- Date Created
- 1992
- Former identifier
- 322852
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