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Introduction
In recent years, the social and organisational context in which museums operate has fundamentally changed. Museums have lost their obligatory claim for public funding and increasingly compete with other leisure and educational institutions for visitors. In the light of these developments the once object-centred museum concerned with the collection, conservation and display of objects is being transformed to a visitor-centred institution. The orientation towards the audience and the visitor entails a growing importance of museum marketing ([44] Kolb, 2000; [45] Kotler and Kotler, 1998; [52] Lumley, 1988; [54] McLean, 1997; [87] Walsh, 1992).
Museum marketing develops relationships with different constituencies, including the audience, friends, volunteers and sponsors. It employs methods and techniques from general marketing to identify different market segments and to explore visitors' interests, needs, perceptions and preferences. Its findings are used to inform exhibition planning and development ([44] Kolb, 2000; [45] Kotler and Kotler, 1998; [54] McLean, 1997). Yet, museum marketing has shown relatively little interest in visitors' experience of exhibits and leaves this area of research to visitor studies (for rare exceptions see, [29], [31] Goulding, 1999a, 2000).
Visitor studies are a largely applied field of research primarily concerned with the evaluation and assessment of exhibits. The focus of visitor studies is the assessment of the educational impact of exhibitions on the audience. Visitor research employs a range of methods to assess whether exhibits attract and hold people's attention and to explore people's experience and understanding of exhibitions. These methods include behavioural measures, field observation and different interview techniques ([22] Falk and Dierking, 2000; [38] Hein, 1998). Unfortunately, visitor research is often preoccupied with the educational role of museums and the learning outcome of museum visits while ignoring other aspects of the museum experience.
In recent years, some concern has been voiced over the separation of marketing and visitor research. It is being argued that:
- visitor studies may produce observations and findings of relevance to museum marketing and museum managers ([41] Kelly and Sas, 1998; [88] Webb, 1993); and
- marketing research may offer methods and techniques to broaden the scope of visitor studies ([14] Caldwell, 2002; [26] Gilmore and Rentschler, 2002; [65] Rentschler, 1998; [66] Rentschler and Potter, 1996; [67] Rentschler and Reussner, 2002).
This paper draws on...