Targeting Female Arts Audiences Online
Katie Leimbach
Drexel University
Submitted in partial fulfillment of the Master of Science degree in Arts Administration
November 26, 2008
TABLE OF CONTENTS Listing of Tables...... iii Listing of Figures ...... iv Abstract...... v Statement of Purpose...... 1
TOPIC...... 1 IMPORTANCE TO THE GENERAL PUBLIC ...... 1 IMPORTANCE TO THE ARTS ADMINISTRATION FIELD ...... 1 METHODOLOGY...... 1 EXPECTED FINDINGS ...... 2 Literature and Background ...... 3
THE ARTS MARKETING FIELD ...... 3 The Development of Arts Marketing ...... 4 Challenges in Marketing the Arts ...... 5 Strategy in Marketing the Arts ...... 6 Gender...... 9 THE FEMALE POPULATION ...... 11 National Population...... 11 Regional Population ...... 17 FEMALE ARTS PARTICIPATION ...... 22 National Arts Participation...... 22 Regional Arts Participation ...... 28 THE FEMALE INFLUENCE ON ATTENDANCE...... 28 Spousal Influence ...... 29 Role in Viral Marketing ...... 31 THE FEMALE CONSUMER...... 32 Women’s Internet Usage...... 33 Targeting Women on the Internet ...... 37 Definition of Terms...... 43 Procedure...... 46 Limitations of the Study ...... 50 Evaluation of 34 Arts Organizations’ Websites in the Greater Philadelphia Region ...... 51
EMAIL UTILIZATION ...... 51 INFORMATION AVAILABILITY...... 53 USE OF WOMEN IN IMAGES ...... 62 ONLINE COMMUNITY PRESENCE ...... 65 CONVENIENCE OFFERINGS ...... 68 DEGREE OF HUMANIZED TECHNOLOGY...... 71 Summary...... 76 Conclusions and Implications ...... 77 Appendices...... 80
A. 2007 PHILADELPHIA CULTURAL LIST COOPERATIVE PARTICIPANT ROSTER...... 80 B. 2007 PHILADELPHIA CULTURAL LIST COOPERATIVE COMMON DEMOGRAPHICS REPORT ...... 80 Bibliography ...... 81
ii
Listing of Tables
Table 1: Annual Estimates of the Population by Five-Year Age Groups and Sex for the U.S.: 2000-2006 ...... 11 Table 2: Reclassifying 2006’s National Estimated Female Population from Five-Year Age Groups into Generations...... 13 Table 3: Generational Classification of the National Female Population...... 14 Table 4: Extracting Adult National Female Population from Five-Year Age Groups for Generation Y... 15 Table 5: Generational Classification of the National Adult Female Population...... 15 Table 6: 2006 Population Estimates by Five-Year Age Groups and Sex for Philadelphia's 5-County Region ...... 17 Table 7: Reclassifying 2006’s 5-County Female Population from Five-Year Age Groups into Generations ...... 19 Table 8: Generational Classification of the 5-County Female Population ...... 20 Table 9: Extracting Adult 5-County Female Population from Five-Year Age Groups for Generation Y.. 21 Table 10: Adult Generational Classification of the 5-County Female Population ...... 21 Table 11: Demographic Distribution of U.S. Adults who attend/Visit/Read at Least Once in the 12-Month period ending August 2002 ...... 23 Table 12: Demographic Distribution of Total Attenders at Arts Events: 1997 ...... 24 Table 13: Change in Gender Proportions of Art Attenders between 1997 and 2002 ...... 24 Table 14: Rates at Which U.S. Adults Attend/Visit/Read by Demographic Group, 2002 (Percentage Participating at Least Once in a 12-Month period ending August 2002)...... 25 Table 15: Attendance Rates for Arts Events, By Gender, United States, 1997...... 25 Table 16: Change in Female Attendance Rates between 1997 and 2002 ...... 26 Table 17: Female Percentage of Total Attendance at Arts Events vs. Female Percentage of Total Attenders: 1997 ...... 27 Table 18: Adult American Internet Usage Conversion from Percentage to Number ...... 34 Table 19: U.S. Adults Use of the Internet to Explore the Arts, 2002 ...... 36 Table 20: Sample of 34 Art’s Organizations in Greater Philadelphia Region Surveyed...... 48 Table 21: Sample’s Email Utilization on Website...... 52 Table 22: Sample’s Information Availability on Website I...... 54 Table 23: Sample’s Information Availability on Website II...... 57 Table 24: Sample’s Information Availability on Website III ...... 60 Table 25: Sample’s Use of Women in Images...... 65 Table 26: Sample’s Online Community Presence ...... 67 Table 27: Sample’s Convenience Offerings ...... 69 Table 28: Sample’s Degree of Humanized Technology I...... 72 Table 29: Sample’s Degree of Humanized Technology II ...... 74 iii
Listing of Figures
Figure 1: Sex Comparison for 2006 Estimate of the Population by Five-Year Age Group for the U.S. ... 12 Figure 2: Proportions for Generational Classification of the 2006 National Female Population...... 14 Figure 3: Proportions for Generational Classification of the 2006 National Adult Female Population..... 16 Figure 4: Sex Comparison for 2006 Annual Estimates of the Population by Five-Year Age Group for Philadelphia’s 5-County Region ...... 18 Figure 5: Percent More Women than Men in the United States Compared to in the 5-County Region for 2006...... 19 Figure 6: Proportions for Generational Classification of the 2006 5-County Female Population...... 20 Figure 7: Proportions for Generational Classification of the 2006 5-County Adult Female Population ... 22
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Abstract
This study explores what online marketing strategies best target women, and evaluates how well a sample of 34 nonprofit arts organizations in Greater Philadelphia are marketing to women with their websites. With declining audiences and increasing funding competition, it is critical for arts organizations to target the most profitable segments. Since women make the majority of all buying decisions, and participate in more arts activities, it is paramount for arts organizations to implement strategies to reach them. While the samples utilized these online strategies to a degree, most are not meeting the wants and needs of the female consumer.
v Katie Leimbach
Statement of Purpose
Topic
This study seeks to understand what marketing strategies nonprofit arts organizations can utilize to most effectively and efficiently target female audiences online. Although there is extensive empirical data that proves that women make up the majority of nonprofit arts audience and are often a catalyst in men’s attendance, there is relatively no literature that explores how nonprofit arts marketers can use this information to improve their marketing strategies.
Importance to the General Public
Women, deemed the “Chief Purchasing Agents” by consumer behaviorists, make over
80% of the buying decisions in all homes (Gogoi 2005; Humistion 2008). However, few nonprofit arts organizations have made efforts to understand the female consumer’s wants and needs, or shaped marketing strategies to meet her wants and needs.
Importance to the Arts Administration Field
The importance of this study is derived from nonprofit arts organizations’ needs to increase earned income and decrease marketing costs in light of declining audiences and increasing funding competition (Kotler 1997). Therefore, it is of paramount importance for arts marketers to target the most profitable segments, in particular women as this study seeks to prove.
Methodology
There are three areas of literature and data that will be examined: the evolution of in the nonprofit arts marketing field, national and regional population, nonprofit arts audience participation, and female consumer behavior online. 1 Katie Leimbach
Secondary data sources will include: U.S. Census Bureau data, audience participation studies, marketing and arts magazines, journals, and reports.
This research will then be used to create an evaluative framework for the fieldwork to assess the degree to which a sample of nonprofit arts organizations market to women online, explore potentially beneficial tactics that are consistently missing, and to create a new marketing strategy paradigm that nonprofit arts organizations can utilize to most effectively and efficiently target female audiences online.
Expected Findings
It is expected this study will show that nonprofit arts marketers have not examined their female audiences in depth, are not utilizing marketing tactics that meet the wants and needs of the female consumer, and that there is a significant benefit to be gained from better understanding women’s Internet behavior and appropriately targeting them online.
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Literature and Background
The Arts Marketing Field
In recent years, nonprofit arts organizations have embraced marketing theory, and have developed marketing strategies to achieve their organizational goals. The first section of the study will explore why arts organizations have adopted marketing, what marketing challenges they continue to face, and how organizations theoretically target audiences and position themselves in the minds of the arts patron.
Arts marketing evolved into an integral component of arts organizations due to various external forces, such as changes in funding, the need for new and increased earned income, more competition from both other arts organizations and other leisure activities, and a greater understanding of audiences and consumer behavior.
Although arts organizations have incorporated marketing into their operations, they continue to face many internal and external challenges. These include maintaining the mission of the organization while implementing strategies and tactics, recruiting artists and program staff to support and contribute to efforts, and collecting and analyzing audience research to best meet their needs while maintaining the artistic product of the organization.
Although marketing has become more important than ever for arts organizations, research in the arts marketing field is still new and evolving. Areas such as participation, visitor studies, cultural tourism, economic impact, and consumer behavior have been researched and discussed considerably; however, gender target marketing (particularly to women) has not been explored even though many authors note that women make up a greater portion of audiences than men
(Colbert 2003; Kotler 1997).
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The Development of Arts Marketing
Arts organizations adopt marketing practices for a variety of reasons. Most authors agree that economic changes were an integral component in the development of arts marketing
(Hatcher 2005; Kawashima 1999; Kotler 1998; Kotler 2000; Kotler 1997; McCarthy 2007;
Tobelem 1998), as well as increased competition from not only other arts organizations, but also other leisure activities (Colbert 2003; Kawashima 1999; Kotler 1998; Kotler 2000; Kotler 1997;
McCarthy 2007; Rentschler 2002; Tobelem 1998). Arts organizations face intense competition with other like organizations in their sector as well as other for-profit leisure enterprises (Kotler
2000), such as movie theaters, amusement parks, and sports stadiums for decreasing audiences with decreasing disposable income and time. Economic changes include decreased government funds, increased competition for private support, rising operating costs, and decreasing audiences
(Kotler 1997: page 4). Therefore, reliance on earned income has increased.
Arts organizations had to integrate marketing into their strategic plans and management.
First, the awareness of the economic need for marketing occurred, then the recognition of the applicability of marketing and marketing departments grew, and finally today marketing is embedded into most developed arts organizations’ operations (Rentschler 2002).
As arts organizations began to adopt marketing as part of their strategic planning and operations, strategies and practices eventually standardized and literature shifted from arguing the need for marketing to the most effective ways to plan and use marketing. Rentschler terms this period from 1995 onward as “The Age of Discovery.” This period produced the first texts
(Kotler and Scheff’s Standing Room Only and Museum Strategy and Marketing), manuals, handbooks, and journal articles on arts marketing, which allowed more and more organizations to learn, understand, plan, and implement marketing strategies (Rentschler 2002: page 7).
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Challenges in Marketing the Arts
Although marketing had been adopted profusely by arts organizations during this “Age of
Discovery,” many challenges remain. Most authors agree that one of the greatest challenges in arts marketing is maintaining the mission of the organizations (Colbert 2003; Kotler 1997;
Tobelem 1998). Since arts organizations are mission-oriented entities, the traditional theories of marketing do not hold. The fundamental purpose of marketing is to understand the needs of the consumer and to deliver a product or service to meet that need. However, in the arts, marketers cannot change the essence of the artist product without inhibiting the mission of the organization.
The product follows from that mission, and thus is not dependent on profitability. “Businesses innovate only when there is economic justification to do so. Nonprofit arts organizations innovate and explore in the pursuit of social or aesthetic value, even when there is no assurance of economic success (Kotler 1997: page 20).” The inability to change the artistic product or develop a new artistic product to meet the need of the consumer is what distinguishes arts marketing from traditional marketing. “Its raison d’être is independent of the market, which is what makes it a particular marketing challenge (Colbert 2003: page 31).”
Another continuing challenge for arts marketers is recruiting artists and program staff to support and contribute to efforts. Many authors note that artists, curators, educators, and scholars continue to distrust marketing for fear that it will inhibit their artistic freedom and abilities to uphold the mission of the organization at the expense of the market demand and consumer needs (Hatcher 2005; Kotler 1997; Tobelem 1998). In traditional marketing, marketers work with product developers to produce products that meet consumers’ wants and needs. However, in the arts, marketers work with artists and program staff to understand the artistic product in order to best package and communicate that product to their audiences.
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Marketers can also aid artists and program staff in choosing among many project ideas to produce the most effective and successful projects with the organization’s limited resources.
Strategy in Marketing the Arts
Even though arts organizations have adopted marketing concepts, they must tailor existing for-profit theory and strategies to meet the unique aspects of the arts. Some authors argue that arts marketers do not seek to meet consumers’ needs by offering a product they demand (Colbert 2003; Tobelem 1998), while others argue that arts organizations can be consumer-oriented even in product development (Kotler 2000; Kotler 1997). However, all authors within the scope of this research agree that marketing planning must be strategic and include segmenting, targeting, and positioning.
Segmenting
In Standing Room Only, Kotler and Scheff define segmentation as “grouping the consumer base by various criteria (page 94).” Groupings include geographic, demographic, or psychographic variables; however, demographic segmentation variables are most commonly used by arts organizations. After identifying the base to use for segmenting the market, marketers then develop profiles for those resulting segments, and finally develop measures of each segment’s attractiveness (pages 94-95).
In "Knowing the Public," Kawashma defines segmentation as “analytical categorization of current attenders (page 25),” while Beaulac, Colbert, and Duhaime define segmentation as
“the action of regrouping the units making up a market of sub-groups in such a way that each group is characterized by homogeneous needs and that the different groups are separated from each other by virtue of their differing requirements (as cited in Tobelem 1998: pages 350-351).”
Both traditional marketers and arts marketers agree that organizations and their respective products and services cannot be all things to all people, and that what appeals to one group may 6 Katie Leimbach be unattractive to another (Kotler 1997; Tobelem 1998). There is not sufficient time or resources to meet everyone’s needs; therefore, segmentation is important for organizations so they can market their products and services more effectively. When analyzing audience groups, it is important to include segments that currently attend/visit the arts organization as well as the non- attendees/visitors in order to prioritize the best segments for that organization to target.
Targeting
In Standing Room Only, Kotler and Scheff describe targeting as deciding which and how many identified segments to serve. Before selecting those target segments, organizations should learn as much as possible about each segment under consideration to determine if and how it can meet the segment’s needs, interests, and desires (page 109). Organizations can use a variety of resources to aid in choosing target market segments. Although arts marketing research is a new and evolving discipline, there is ample scholarly research and surveys on arts participation.
Based on the scope of this research, the most extensive and widely utilized surveys on arts participation are those conducted and commissioned by the National Endowment for the
Arts (NEA):
The National Endowment for the Arts, the federal agency entrusted with supporting the arts in the United States, funded nation-wide surveys on arts participation in 1982, 1985 and 1992 [and 1997 and 2002 since this publication]. It has also commissioned a series of research projects to analyze the national data on specific issues (e.g. DiMaggio and Ostrower, 1992; Cherbo and Peters, 1995; Gray, 1995; Peterson et al., 1996; AMS Planning and Research Corp., 1996) (Kawashma 1998: page 26).
The strengths of these reports are that they are produced by an established and reputable organization, they are extensive in breadth, and the data collected is well-documented.
Additionally, these studies provide insight into the historical participation of prospective audiences: segments which arts organizations could target, but are not currently doing so.
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In “Public Involvement in the Arts,” Huggins Balfe and Peters argue that these studies use traditional categorizations, and so leave out large groups that participate in untraditional arts or in untraditional ways. Although these scholars provide strong cases to support these arguments, participation studies are still useful to marketers when examining potential segments to target. Marketers must remember to “think outside the box,” particularly within organizations that do not conform to the norms uncovered in arts research.
Another limitation to national arts participation research is that it is on the general population, and general arts and culture participation. The findings in these studies may not be germane to every arts organization. To learn about current audiences, some arts organizations have employed visitor studies. Various authors (Kawashima 1999; Tobelem 1998) note that the strengths of visitor studies are that they can provide an arts organization with a custom picture of their current audience. In "Knowing the Public," Kawashma argues that the origin of visitor studies in related to the practice of evaluation, and that the most important research topics in visitor studies is the relationship to people’s learning, particularly in museums (page 31). In
"The Marketing Approach in Museums," Tobelem argues that the most important research topic in visitor studies is the expectations of different types of public, or segments (page 339).
However, these studies are costly and timely to administer and evaluate, are not always very accurate, and only give the organization a picture of who already is a customer, not the potential segments that they have not reached.
Positioning
In Standing Room Only, Kotler and Scheff define positioning as “the act of designing the organization’s image and offer so that it occupies a distinct and valued place in the target customers’ minds (page 115).” After an organization determines the best markets to target, it establishes a specific position that will reach that market, bearing in mind the organization’s
8 Katie Leimbach internal and external environment as well as its competitive forces. Then, the organization can plan a marketing mix (place, price, promotion) for an artistic product that will be seen as a value and benefit to that target market. In "Entrepreneurship and Leadership in Marketing the Arts,"
Colbert makes a further distinction: “branding” is the “synthesis of product characteristics in the mind of the consumer,” while “positioning” is “the place that a product or a brand holds in the consumer’s mind (page 37).”
Nonprofit arts organizations have indeed embraced marketing theory, and have developed sophisticated marketing strategies to achieve their organizational goals. Although arts marketers continue to face many challenges within their organization, the discipline has become embedded in the operations of arts organizations, and new and innovative strategies are developing constantly. Many arts organizations seek to increase their current audience segments, as well as attract new and different segments. Time and resources are limited, and so it is important for marketers to choose the most lucrative market segments to target.
Gender
As noted in the first section of this study, demographic segmentation variables are most commonly used by arts organizations to determine target markets. These variables include “age, gender, income, education, occupation, religion, race, family life cycle, and geographic factors
(Kotler 1997: page 95).” The purpose of this section of the research is to explore the arts audience in relation to one type of demographic variable: gender1.
Most authors agree (Colbert 2003; Kotler 1997) and surveys reinforce (NEA 1997; NEA
2002) that women dominate arts audiences. In “Entrepreneurship and Leadership in Marketing the Arts,” Colbert argues that the female audience composition is even greater in the high arts, particularly dance, and more women tend to read novels than men (page 32).
1 For the purpose of this study, there is not a distinction between gender and sex. 9 Katie Leimbach
Kotler and Scheff also note that in many cases when men attend an arts exhibition or performance, it is in fact the female audience member who actually made the decision to attend
(page 99). They provide various social differences as a possible explanation for the variation in arts participation. One reason may be that women are more involved in the arts as children, including training and attendance opportunities, and cultural assumptions about the relative importance of arts education may be greater for girls than for boys. Colbert argues that childhood plays a significant role in arts participation motivation, but does not directly link different early arts opportunities to gender (page 34). Kippax (1988) simply says because the arts are seen as “more feminine” that “most boys and young men are actively discouraged from expressing an interest in the arts; they are turned to more ‘manly’ interests (page 5).”
Finally, Kotler and Scheff postulate that, “arts hold more appeal for individuals of either sex who exhibit the cluster of traits measured by feminine gender identity scales (page 100).”
Because of this hypothesis, they argue that arts organizations should not target women specifically, but rather the “personality characteristics that stimulate involvement in the arts
(page 100).”
However in Scheff’s recent 2007 publication, Arts Marketing Insights, she changes her argument significantly. Ten years later Scheff is now not only a proponent of arts organizations targeting women specifically, but also argues “women are the largest and most important market segment” and that “marketers should seriously consider what approaches are most effective in reaching women (page 40).”
This study argues that since there is extensive empirical data that proves women are: 1) the majority of the national population, 2) make up the majority of nonprofit arts audiences, 3) are often a catalyst in men’s attendance, and 4) exhibit predictable patterns and tendencies in consumer behavior, arts organizations should target women specifically.
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The Female Population
Arts organizations should target women most simply because women make up the majority of both the national and regional population.
National Population
Table 1: Annual Estimates of the Population by Five-Year Age Groups and Sex for the U.S., 2000-2006
Population Estimates Sex and Age 2006 2005 2004 2003 2002 2001 2000 MALE 147,512,152 145,973,538 144,467,272 142,937,648 141,592,348 140,079,250 138,482,231 Under 5 years 10,441,759 10,386,943 10,263,864 10,116,289 9,994,122 9,897,189 9,816,144 5 to 9 years 10,077,345 10,003,078 10,038,541 10,118,439 10,233,550 10,364,247 10,486,669 10 to 14 years 10,562,775 10,692,773 10,829,786 10,866,423 10,818,003 10,705,669 10,566,199 15 to 19 years 10,934,864 10,803,526 10,639,641 10,526,491 10,487,870 10,461,038 10,420,513 20 to 24 years 10,910,090 10,858,108 10,783,847 10,622,308 10,434,842 10,145,834 9,781,930 25 to 29 years 10,584,270 10,239,042 9,967,363 9,725,816 9,625,645 9,616,720 9,768,277 30 to 34 years 9,980,383 10,147,355 10,329,400 10,441,305 10,500,642 10,448,199 10,341,337 35 to 39 years 10,649,913 10,553,764 10,559,301 10,713,554 10,924,013 11,135,712 11,301,451 40 to 44 years 11,200,369 11,367,101 11,453,369 11,409,706 11,397,053 11,337,484 11,171,172 45 to 49 years 11,261,856 11,102,043 10,913,334 10,729,875 10,482,259 10,200,785 9,955,175 50 to 54 years 10,027,772 9,788,208 9,534,546 9,311,264 9,147,390 9,134,024 8,700,874 55 to 59 years 8,845,291 8,422,608 7,999,003 7,625,976 7,311,047 6,741,168 6,553,822 60 to 64 years 6,378,589 6,200,604 5,997,495 5,769,221 5,474,602 5,283,579 5,163,229 65 to 69 years 4,838,842 4,722,352 4,634,863 4,526,673 4,441,031 4,409,273 4,394,682 70 to 74 years 3,831,425 3,811,416 3,801,419 3,832,659 3,865,615 3,893,772 3,905,318 75 to 79 years 3,119,130 3,120,477 3,103,618 3,105,230 3,084,403 3,067,283 3,054,968 80 to 84 years 2,179,201 2,160,188 2,118,291 2,056,302 2,004,336 1,930,410 1,854,262 85 to 89 years 1,148,864 1,088,852 1,032,183 1,003,213 958,679 924,912 888,504 90 to 94 years 424,109 400,813 373,966 349,941 328,014 307,781 287,968 95 to 99 years 100,838 91,286 81,908 76,306 68,967 63,972 59,562 100 years + 14,467 13,001 11,534 10,657 10,265 10,199 10,175 FEMALE 151,886,332 150,533,523 149,170,886 147,858,375 146,533,625 145,147,034 143,734,721 Under 5 years 9,975,877 9,928,194 9,806,008 9,666,320 9,550,193 9,456,803 9,372,273 5 to 9 years 9,632,542 9,554,553 9,585,414 9,655,602 9,756,786 9,876,970 9,991,247 10 to 14 years 10,064,622 10,185,970 10,312,888 10,345,692 10,302,915 10,192,699 10,055,337 15 to 19 years 10,389,322 10,259,596 10,097,114 9,970,190 9,895,893 9,856,289 9,843,782 20 to 24 years 10,201,150 10,194,765 10,173,407 10,086,552 9,915,527 9,677,183 9,350,447 25 to 29 years 10,125,210 9,815,380 9,571,758 9,386,954 9,311,110 9,340,388 9,541,020 30 to 34 years 9,726,116 9,942,879 10,137,827 10,275,744 10,330,369 10,296,576 10,201,791 35 to 39 years 10,535,872 10,451,887 10,487,518 10,689,097 10,925,354 11,153,344 11,360,414 40 to 44 years 11,280,796 11,493,231 11,596,628 11,574,814 11,556,827 11,512,030 11,354,171 45 to 49 years 11,535,713 11,383,923 11,207,440 11,035,707 10,798,428 10,512,291 10,267,576 50 to 54 years 10,452,833 10,213,157 9,963,386 9,732,129 9,553,126 9,530,958 9,074,323 55 to 59 years 9,379,154 8,930,053 8,488,209 8,098,571 7,774,809 7,194,099 7,005,676 60 to 64 years 6,983,649 6,801,313 6,591,671 6,344,192 6,029,351 5,822,345 5,693,879 65 to 69 years 5,536,712 5,411,367 5,325,425 5,220,697 5,142,445 5,123,289 5,123,192 70 to 74 years 4,709,865 4,704,877 4,718,257 4,775,253 4,837,098 4,897,874 4,946,627 75 to 79 years 4,261,897 4,298,451 4,318,393 4,363,829 4,366,721 4,375,976 4,380,745 80 to 84 years 3,486,463 3,480,577 3,440,657 3,361,411 3,305,654 3,217,138 3,132,293 85 to 89 years 2,192,594 2,117,468 2,044,651 2,022,012 1,979,945 1,953,217 1,925,253 90 to 94 years 1,032,737 1,007,401 970,321 935,384 902,663 872,529 840,751 95 to 99 years 324,001 304,367 284,968 272,476 255,656 243,202 232,644 100 years + 59,207 54,114 48,946 45,749 42,755 41,834 41,280
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Table 1 shows the most recent population estimates of the United States by five-year age groups and sex for the years 2000 to 2006 following the last Census in 2000 (U.S. Census
Bureau 2007).2 There are more females than males for all six years reported (50.73% compared to 49.27% in 2006). However, the male population is greater until ages 40 to 44 years for the years 2002 to 2006.
Figure 1: Sex Comparison for 2006 Estimate of the Population by Five-Year Age Group for the U.S.
To examine the 2006 female population of the United States by age, the estimate’s five- year age groups were divided into cohorts or generational categories. There are two reasons proposed for looking at the female population in this way. First, the estimate’s five-year age groups yield twenty groups with only a slight population difference between sequential groups, and thus too many variables for this analysis. Second, demographic research has shown unique attributes and behaviors for generational groups. Not only are the consumer behaviors of women
2 The Population Estimates Program “publishes total resident population estimates and demographic components of change (births, deaths, and migration) each year.” They also “publish the estimates by demographic characteristics (age, sex, race, and Hispanic origin) for the nation, states and counties (http://www.census.gov/popest/estimates.php).” The estimates are released in May of the following year. Therefore, at the time of this study, the most current estimates available were for 2006. 12 Katie Leimbach and men unique, but age groups also exhibit unique behaviors. As certain marketing tactics for one gender will not necessarily effectively target the other gender, neither will a universal marketing tactic work for multiple generations.
For the purpose of this study, the World War II Generation is defined as individuals born in the years 1946 and before (ages 60 and over in 2006); the Baby Boom Generation is defined as individuals born in the years 1947 to 1966 (ages 40 to 59 in 2006); Generation X is defined as individuals born in the years 1967 to 1981 (ages 25 to 39 in 2006); and, Generation Y is defined as individuals born in the year 1982 and after (ages 24 and under in 2006). Various sources
(Crowley 2003; Segal Company 2001) define these generations slightly differently by beginning and ending birth dates. Therefore, the five-year age groups were classified by the generation most closely represented, taking into account the five years in the group and the varying beginning and ending dates from the sources noted above. Table 2 below represents the breakdown of the 2006 estimate of the female population from the five-year age groups into generations.
Table 2: Reclassifying 2006’s Estimated Female Population from Five-Year Age Groups into Generations
Five-Year Age 2006 Estimated Groups Female Population Under 5 9,975,877 5 to 9 9,632,542 Generation Y 10 to 14 10,064,622 15 to 19 10,389,322 20 to 24 10,201,150 25 to 29 10,125,210 30 to 34 9,726,116 Generation X 35 to 39 10,535,872 40 to 44 11,280,796 45 to 49 11,535,713 Baby Boom Generation 50 to 54 10,452,833 55 to 59 9,379,154 60 to 64 6,983,649 65 to 69 5,536,712 70 to 74 4,709,865 75 to 79 4,261,897 World War II Generation 80 to 84 3,486,463 85 to 89 2,192,594 90 to 94 1,032,737 95 to 99 324,001 100 and over 59,207 151,886,332 13 Katie Leimbach
Reclassification of the five-year age groups into generations as described above yields the following proportion of women in each generation for the 2006 national estimate:
Table 3: Generational Classification of the 2006 National Female Population
Age Groups Age Groups Total # of % of Total Generations Birth Dates (July 1, 2006) (July 1, 2008) Women Women Generation Y 1982 and after 24 and under 26 and under 50,263,513 33.09% Generation X 1967 to 1981 25 to 39 27 to 41 30,387,198 20.01% Baby Boom Generation 1947 to 1966 40 to 59 42 to 61 42,648,946 28.08% World War II Generation 1946 to before 60 and over 62 and over 28,587,125 18.82% 151,886,322 100%
The generation with the largest number of women in the 2006 population estimate is
Generation Y (ages 24 and under) consisting of 50,263,513 women, which is 33.09% of the total female population. The generation with the second largest number of women is the Baby Boom
Generation (ages 40 to 59) consisting of 42,648,946 women, which is 28.08% of the total female population.
Figure 2: Proportions for Generational Classification of the 2006 National Female Population
Because this study is intended to be a tool for arts markers to more effectively and efficiently use their scarce marketing budgets to target women to gain the greatest earned income for their organizations, the adult female population is more important since those are the women
14 Katie Leimbach capable of making a purchase today. Considering only the adult population in Generation Y, the proportion in that generation becomes much less significant.
Table 4: Extracting 2006 National Adult Female Population from Five-Year Age Groups for Generation Y
Five-Year Age 2006 Estimated Groups Female Population Under 5 9,975,877 5 to 9 9,632,542 Generation Y 10 to 14 10,064,622 15 to 19 10,389,322 20 to 24 10,201,150
To do this, only the 15 to 19 (because two years later in 2008 during the time of this study, these women are now 17 to 21) and the 20 to 24 five-year age groups will be included in the population total for Generation Y.
Table 5: Generational Classification of the 2006 National Adult Female Population
Age Groups Age Groups Total # of % of Total Generations Birth Dates (2006) (2008) Women Women Generation Y 1982 and after 15 to 24 17 to 26 20,590,472 16.85% Generation X 1967 to 1981 25 to 39 27 to 41 30,387,198 24.86% Baby Boom Generation 1947 to 1966 40 to 59 42 to 61 42,648,946 34.90% World War II Generation 1946 and before 60 and over 62 and over 28,587,125 23.39% 151,886,322 100%
Now the generation with the largest number of adult women in the 2006 national population estimate is the Baby Boom Generation (ages 40 to 59), which is now 34.90% of the total adult female population. The generation with the second largest number of women is
Generation X (ages 25 to 39) consisting of 30, 387,198, which is now 24.86% of the total adult female population.
15 Katie Leimbach
Figure 3: Proportions for Generational Classification of the 2006 National Adult Female Population
Examination of the Census’ Annual Estimates of the Population by sex and five-year age groups for the United States for the most recent year reported (2006) showed that the majority of the population in the Unites States is female, and the proportion of women to men increases with age. When this female population was divided into generations, it showed that the majority of the female population falls into Generation Y followed by the Baby Boom Generation; however, when only the adult population of Generation Y was considered, then the majority of the female population fell into the Baby Boom Generation followed by Generation X.
16 Katie Leimbach
Regional Population
Because this study’s fieldwork will be focusing on arts organizations in the Philadelphia area, the population with regards to sex and age in Philadelphia’s 5-County region – Bucks,
Chester, Delaware, Montgomery, and Philadelphia Counties – was examined to see if the proportions from the national population are consistent. Table 6 below shows the most recent population estimates of Philadelphia’s 5-County region by five-year groups sex for the year 2006
(U.S. Census Bureau 2006).
Table 6: 2006 Population Estimates by Five-Year Age Groups and Sex for Philadelphia's 5-County Region
Bucks Chester Delaware Montgomery Philadelphia TOTAL Male 307,721 238,033 267,663 377,668 677,361 1,868,446 Under 5 years 18,047 15,524 17,380 24,437 54,544 129,932 5 to 9 years 19,663 15,847 18,038 24,669 48,621 126,838 10 to 14 years 22,204 17,521 19,900 26,606 52,064 138,295 15 to 19 years 22,731 18,282 23,689 26,331 58,392 149,425 20 to 24 years 18,957 16,030 20,180 22,533 51,842 129,542 25 to 29 years 15,902 13,977 12,908 19,159 44,252 106,198 30 to 34 years 17,255 14,209 14,669 23,288 45,494 114,915 35 to 39 years 21,793 16,832 18,179 28,276 48,223 133,303 40 to 44 years 26,025 19,031 21,143 31,032 49,057 146,288 45 to 49 years 27,828 20,570 22,236 32,227 48,503 151,364 50 to 54 years 24,695 18,169 19,806 28,956 42,889 134,515 55 to 59 years 21,507 15,504 16,600 24,951 36,613 115,175 60 to 64 years 15,450 11,282 11,642 18,070 26,320 82,764 65 to 69 years 11,242 8,138 8,469 13,443 20,856 62,148 70 to 74 years 8,982 6,169 7,114 11,124 16,659 50,048 75 to 79 years 7,419 5,086 6,600 9,823 13,873 42,801 80 to 84 years 4,704 3,516 5,120 7,321 10,325 30,986 85 years and over 3,317 2,346 3,990 5,422 8,834 23,909
Female 315,484 244,079 288,333 398,020 771,033 2,016,949 Under 5 years 16,898 15,066 16,827 23,800 52,087 124,678 5 to 9 years 19,063 15,290 17,196 23,789 46,349 121,687 10 to 14 years 21,205 16,282 19,110 25,354 50,675 132,626 15 to 19 years 21,026 17,579 22,240 25,691 58,550 145,086 20 to 24 years 18,099 16,462 18,753 22,073 52,926 128,313 25 to 29 years 14,725 12,938 12,894 17,360 48,257 106,174 30 to 34 years 17,237 13,549 15,037 22,527 50,169 118,519 35 to 39 years 22,136 17,128 19,601 28,593 54,074 141,532 40 to 44 years 26,646 20,026 22,328 32,217 54,133 155,350 45 to 49 years 28,607 21,110 23,689 33,336 55,727 162,469 50 to 54 years 25,111 18,535 21,310 30,207 49,997 145,160 55 to 59 years 21,948 15,890 18,052 26,484 45,447 127,821 60 to 64 years 16,007 11,823 13,477 19,899 34,416 95,622 65 to 69 years 11,888 8,361 10,028 15,475 28,302 74,054 70 to 74 years 10,509 7,151 9,683 13,624 24,520 65,487 75 to 79 years 9,650 6,533 9,911 13,642 22,784 62,520 80 to 84 years 7,509 5,189 8,981 11,598 19,981 53,258 85 years and over 7,220 5,167 9,216 12,351 22,639 56,593
17 Katie Leimbach
As seen in the national population, there are also more females than males (51.91% compared to 48.09%) in Philadelphia’s 5-County region.
Figure 4: Sex Comparison for 2006 Annual Estimates of the Population by Five-Year Age Group for Philadelphia’s 5-County Region
The total proportion of females for the region is even more than for the nation (51.91% of the regional population is female, compared to 50.73% of the national population is female).
Like the national data, the 5-County data shows the male population is greater in the younger age groups. However, in the regional data the female population becomes greater than the male population in the ages 30 to 34 years group, whereas the national female population does not surpass the male population until the ages 40 to 44 years group.
18 Katie Leimbach
Figure 5: Percent More Women than Men in the United States Compared to in the 5-County Region for 2006
The 2006 estimated female population of Philadelphia’s 5-County region was then examined by age using the generational categories established above for the national population.
Table 7: Reclassifying 2006 5-County Female Population from Five-Year Age Groups into Generations
Five-Year 2006 5-County Age Groups Female Population Under 5 124,678 5 to 9 121,687 Generation Y 10 to 14 132,626 15 to 19 145,086 20 to 24 128,313 25 to 29 106,174 30 to 34 118,519 Generation X 35 to 39 141,532 40 to 44 155,350 45 to 49 162,469 Baby Boom Generation 50 to 54 145,160 55 to 59 127,821 60 to 64 95,622 65 to 69 74,054 70 to 74 65,487 75 to 79 62,520 World War II Generation 80 to 84 53,258 85 and over 56,593 2,016,949
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Reclassification of the five-year age groups into generations yields the following proportion of women in each generation for the 5-County estimate:
Table 8: Generational Classification of the 2006 5-County Female Population
Age Groups Age Groups Total # of % of Total Generations Birth Dates (2006) (2008) Women Women Generation Y 1982 and after 24 and under 26 and under 652,390 32.35% Generation X 1967 to 1981 25 to 39 27 to 41 366,225 18.16% Baby Boom Generation 1947 to 1966 40 to 59 42 to 61 590,800 29.29% World War II Generation 1946 to before 60 and over 62 and over 407,534 20.21% 2,016,949 100%
Like the national data, the 5-County data shows the generation with the largest number of women in the 2006 population estimate to be Generation Y (ages 24 and under) consisting of
652,390 women, which is 32,35% of the total regional female population. The generation with the second largest number of women is the Baby Boom Generation (ages 40 to 59) consisting of
590,800 women, which is 29.29% of the total female population.
Figure 6: Proportions for Generational Classification of the 2006 5-County Female Population
Considering only the adult population in Generation Y as done for the national data, the proportion in that generation in the 5-County data too becomes much less significant.
20 Katie Leimbach
Table 9: Extracting 2006 5-County Adult Female Population from Five-Year Age Groups for Generation Y
Five-Year Age 2006 5-County Groups Female Population Under 5 124,678 5 to 9 121,687 Generation Y 10 to 14 132,626 15 to 19 145,086 20 to 24 128,313
Like the national data, the generation with the largest number of adult women in the 2006
5-County population estimate is the Baby Boom Generation (ages 40 to 59), which is now
36.07% of the total adult female population. The generation with the second largest number of women is Generation X (ages 25 to 39) consisting of 366,225 women, which is now 22.36% of the total adult female population.
Table 10: Generational Classification of the 2006 5-County Adult Female Population
Age Age Groups Groups Total # of % of Total Generations Birth Dates (2006) (2008) Women Women Generation Y 1982 and after 15 to 24 17 to 26 273,399 16.69% Generation X 1967 to 1981 25 to 39 27 to 41 366,225 22.36% Baby Boom Generation 1947 to 1966 40 to 59 42 to 61 590,800 36.07% World War II Generation 1946 and before 60 and over 62 and over 407,534 24.88% 2,016,949 100%
There is an even larger concentration of adult females classified as the Baby Boom
Generation in the 5-County region compared to the proportion nationally (36.07% regionally compared to 34.90% nationally) and relatively the same concentration of adult females classified as Generation X (24.88% regionally compared to 24.86% nationally).
21 Katie Leimbach
Figure 7: Proportions for Generational Classification of the 2006 5-County Adult Female Population
Female Arts Participation
Arts organizations should target women also because women make up the majority of both the national and regional nonprofit arts audiences.
National Arts Participation
The previous section of this study examined gender in relation to the population of the
United States and Philadelphia’s 5-County region. This section will examine gender in relation to arts participation in the Untied States and Philadelphia’s 5-County region.
The National Endowment for the Arts’ (NEA) Survey of Public Participation of the
Arts (SPPA) collected and published arts participation data from Americans in 1982, 1985, 1992,
1997, and 2002. The 2002 study surveyed over 17,000 adults across the United States in conjunction with the U.S. Bureau of the Census’ Current Population Survey (CPS). The NEA’s
Surveys of Public Participation of the Arts are some of the most comprehensive studies of arts participation in the United States and have demonstrated profound trends. Therefore, the empirical data published in the SPPA studies can be springboards for further research into
22 Katie Leimbach demographic influences of the rate of participation, such as gender, race and ethnicity, age, education, and income.
Table 11 below, derived from the 2002 SPPA, shows that a greater proportion of women than men comprised the arts attendance of arts event overall (55.8% of attendees were women compared to 44.2% were men, a 11.6% difference) and within each of the eleven benchmark disciplines, ranging from 23.6% more women than men comprised attendance of Other Dance events, to 4.6% more women than men comprised attendance of Jazz events (National
Endowment for the Arts 2004: pages 14-15).
Table 11: Demographic Distribution of U.S. Adults who Attended/Visited/Read at Least Once in the 12- Month Period Ending August 2002
Non- Art Fairs ANY of Classical Music- Art Other Historic Jazz Opera Musical Ballet Lit. and These Music als Museum Dance Sites Plays Festivals
Male 44.2% 47.7% 42.7% 42.2% 39.1% 40.1% 31.6% 44.5% 38.2% 38.6% 46.4% 38.8%
Female 55.8% 52.3% 57.3% 57.8% 60.9% 59.9% 68.4% 55.5% 61.8% 61.4% 53.6% 61.2%
100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100%
% More 11.6% 4.6% 14.6% 15.6% 21.8% 19.8% 36.8% 11.0% 23.6% 22.8% 7.2% 22.4% Women
Looking back to the same demographic distribution of arts participation in the 1997
SPPA study3, although the gender distribution of individuals attending any of these arts activities is not reported, it can be seen that women’s participation proportions has increased in certain disciplines, most notably in Jazz. In 1997, Jazz was the once discipline that had a greater percentage of men than women who attended at least one event (53.6% of Jazz attenders had been men compared to 46.4% women, 7.2% less women than men). However in 2002, women’s participation proportion surpassed men’s (47.7% of Jazz attenders had been men, while 52.3%
3 It must be noted that the 1997 SPPA study was conducted differently than the 2002 study, and thus the two are not directly comparable. The 1997 study was a stand-alone random-digit dial telephone survey conducted by a private research firm. The 2002 study was primarily telephone interviews conducted in conjunction with the U.S. Bureau of the Census’ Current Population Survey (National Endowment for the Arts 2004, page 9).
23 Katie Leimbach had been women, 4.6% more women than men) (National Endowment for the Arts 1999: pages
14-15).
Table 12: Demographic Distribution of Total Attenders at Arts Events, 1997
Non- Art Fairs Classical Art Other Historic Jazz Opera Musicals Musical Ballet Literature and Music Museum Dance Sites Plays Festivals Male 53.6% 44.0% 41.7% 43.6% 44.6% 33.9% 47.3% 45.6% 42.0% 49.4% 42.2%
Female 46.4% 56.0% 58.3% 56.4% 55.4% 66.1% 52.7% 54.4% 58.0% 50.6% 57.8%
100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% % More -7.2% 12.0% 16.6% 12.8% 10.8% 32.2% 5.4% 8.8% 16.0% 1.2% 15.6% Women
Table 13 below shows that between 1997 and 2002, the female proportion of art attendees increased in all disciplines except Opera. The decrease in Opera attendance was only a slight 0.5%, and the female proportion remained above the male proportion (57.8% female compared to 41.7% male).
Table 13: Change in Female Proportions of Art Attenders between 1997 and 2002
Non- Arts/ Classical Musical Art Other Historic Jazz Opera Musical Ballet Literature Crafts Music Plays Museum Dance Parks Plays Fair Female Proportion 52.3% 57.3% 57.8% 60.9% 59.9% 68.4% 55.5% 61.8% 61.4% 53.6% 61.2% 2002 Female Proportion 46.4% 56.0% 58.3% 56.4% 55.4% 66.1% 52.7% 54.4% 58.0% 50.6% 57.8% 1997
% More in 5.9% 1.3% -0.5% 4.5% 4.5% 2.3% 2.8% 7.4% 3.4% 3.0% 3.4% 2002
Table 14 that follows, also derived from the 2002 SPPA, shows that a greater proportion of women than men attended any arts event overall (42.4% of women attended compared to
36.4% of men, a 6.0% difference) and within each of the eleven disciplines, ranging from 17.5% more women than men read at least once that year (Literature), to 0.1% more women than men attended at least one Jazz event (National Endowment for the Arts 2004: pages 16-17).
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Table 14: Rates at Which U.S. Adults Attended/Visited/Read by Demographic Group, 2002 (Percentage Participating at Least Once in a 12-Month Period Ending August 2002)
ANY Non- Art Fairs Classical Art Other Historic of Jazz Opera Musicals Musical Ballet Literature and Music Museum Dance Sites These Plays Festivals All 39.0% 10.8% 11.6% 3.29% 17.1% 12.3% 3.9% 26.5% 6.3% 46.7% 31.6% 33.4% Adults
Male 36.4% 10.7% 10.3% 2.8% 14.0% 10.3% 2.5% 24.6% 5.0% 37.6% 30.5% 27.0% Female 42.4% 10.8% 12.7% 3.5% 20.0% 14.2% 5.1% 28.2% 7.5% 55.1% 32.5% 39.2%
% More 6.0% 0.1% 2.4% 0.7% 6.0% 3.9% 2.6% 3.6% 2.5% 17.5% 2.0% 12.2% Women
Looking back to the same rate of participation by gender in the 1997 SPPA study, it can be seen that a greater proportion of women than men attended any arts event, although not reported overall, within nine of the eleven disciplines (men attended Jazz and Historic Sites at a greater rate than women in 1997), ranging from 15.6% more women than men read at least once that year (Literature), to 1.2% more women than men attended an Opera or an Art Museum
(National Endowment for the Arts 1999: page 16).
Table 15: Attendance Rates for Arts Events, By Gender in the United States, 1997
Non- Art Fairs Classical Art Other Historic Jazz Opera Musicals Musical Ballet Literature and Music Museum Dance Sites Plays Festivals All adults 11.9 % 15.6% 4.7% 24.5% 15.8% 5.8% 34.9% 12.4% 63.1% 46.9% 47.5%
Male 13.2% 14.2% 4.0% 22.3% 14.6% 4.1% 34.3% 11.7% 55.0% 48.2% 41.6% Female 10.6% 16.8% 5.2% 26.7% 16.8% 7.5% 35.5% 12.9% 70.6% 45.8% 53.0%
% More -2.6% 2.6% 1.2% 4.4% 2.2% 3.4% 1.2% 1.2% 15.6% -2.4% 11.4% Women
Table 16 that follows shows that between 1997 and 2002, the female attendance rates decreased in all disciplines except Jazz, which was only a slight 0.2% increase. Taking into consideration this result that female arts attendance rates are decreasing in most disciplines, and that the proportion of females compared to males attending arts events are increasing as shown in
Table 13 (except for the 0.5% decrease in proportion of Opera attenders), it would seem that participation rates overall are decreasing, but that men’s participation rates are decreasing at a
25 Katie Leimbach greater rate than women’s participation, or that women’s participation has been much greater than men’s over time.
Table 16: Change in Female Attendance Rates between 1997 and 2002
Non- Arts/ Classical Musical Art Other Historic Jazz Opera Musical Ballet Literature Crafts Music Plays Museum Dance Parks Plays Fair Female Attendance 10.8% 12.7% 3.5% 20.0% 14.2% 5.1% 28.2% 7.5% 55.1% 32.5% 39.2% Rate 2002 Female Attendance 10.6% 16.8% 5.2% 26.7% 16.8% 7.5% 35.5% 12.9% 70.6% 45.8% 53.0% Rate 1997
% More in 0.2% -4.1% -1.7% -6.7% -2.6% -2.4% -7.3% -5.4% -15.5% -13.3% -13.8% 2002
The 1997 SPPA study also presented “Demographic Distribution of Total Attendance at
Arts Events” with the difference from the “Demographic Distribution of Total Attenders at Arts Events” being that the former considers the sum distribution of all attendance. It takes into account frequency so that if one person attended numerous times, that person is counted each time. While the later considers the sum distribution of all people that attended. It does not take into account frequency so that if one person attended numerous times, that person is counted only once. Only attenders and not attendance was presented in 2002, and so it cannot be compared over that time, but comparison of the two charts for 1997 does reveal insight about the gender demographics:
The data for both attenders and total attendance are presented for several reasons. First, only the attender data can be compared with participation via the media and personal participation, because frequency of participation has not been collected for these forms of participation. Second, the total attendance data are the data most useful to arts administrators and organizations, because these are the numbers that are indicative of earned revenue from ticket sales and admission fees. Finally, marked differences between data for attenders and data for total attendance by the same demographic group may disclose important information about the group, especially if the differences are common to several arts activities (National Endowment for the Arts 1999: page 19).
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Table 17: Female Percentage of Total Attendance vs. Female Percentage of Total Attenders, 1997
Non- Arts/ Classical Musical Art Other Historic Jazz Opera Musical Ballet Literature Crafts Music Plays Museum Dance Parks Plays Fair Female 43.0% 51.5% 58.6% 57.1% 57.3% 60.9% 52.0% 51.7% NA 44.6% 60.3% Attendance Female Attenders (from 52.3% 57.3% 57.8% 60.9% 59.9% 68.4% 55.5% 61.8% NA 53.6% 61.2% Table 11)
% More -9.3% -5.8% 0.8% -3.8% -2.6% -7.5% -3.5% -10.1% -9.0% -0.9% Attendance
Table 17 above shows that in all disciplines except Opera, the female percentage of total attenders is greater than the female percentage of total attendance, which goes along with Table
13 that showed that the female percentage of Opera attenders is decreasing over time (National
Endowment for the Arts 1999: page 20). This comparison shows that women attended less frequently within the disciplines than the average number of times for both genders combined, and in turn men attended more frequently within the disciplines than the average number of times for both genders. This may indicate that women tend to attend a number of arts events, but in a variety of disciplines, while men tend to attend multiple events within the same discipline.
Findings from a recent report released by LaPlaca Cohen, a cultural arts marketing firm in New York City, supports the postulation above that women tend to attend a number of arts events, but in a variety of disciplines, while men tend to attend multiple events within the same discipline. LaPlaca Cohen’s Culture Track 2007 is the firm’s fourth study of an ongoing national research study of attitudes and behaviors of cultural audiences, examining trends in attendance at visual and performing arts events, and the motivators and barriers that affect participation (LaPlaca Cohen 2007).
In a presentation by LaPlaca Cohen to leaders in the cultural community on December 3,
2008, it is noted that frequent attendees skewed slightly male at 52%, (LaPlaca Cohen 2007:
27 Katie Leimbach presentation slide 10), which was inferred from the comparison of the Female Percentage of
Total Attendance to the Female Percentage of Total Attenders data reported in the 1997 SPPA.
An analysis of the demographics distribution and attendance rates by gender for the
United States across disciplines and over time yields two significant trends: more women than men attend arts events overall, with this proportion increasing over time; and, gender participation proportions vary greatly among disciplines, though more women than men participate in all disciplines.
Regional Arts Participation
A study as robust as the National Endowment for the Arts’ Survey of Public Participation of the Arts does not exist at the regional level. However, a recent report from the Greater
Philadelphia Cultural Alliance’s (GPCA) Philadelphia Cultural List Cooperative does reveal some data on the gender makeup of arts participants in Philadelphia’s 5-County region. Because the Cooperative is a master database of mailing lists compiled from 83 participating GPCA member organizations, it is a good representative sample of arts participants in the region. The
January 7, 2008 Common Demographics Report (Target Resource Group 2008) created by the vendor that administers the online database system and made available to Cooperative participants, shows that among the records in the database where gender was identified (572,587 unique households in entire database), 58.4% are women compared to only 41.6% men. This is
2.6% greater than the national proportion of female arts participants. See Appendix A for full roster of participating organizations, and Appendix B for full and Common Demographic Report.
The Female Influence on Attendance
Arts organizations should also target women because women are often a catalyst in men’s art event attendance.
28 Katie Leimbach
Spousal Influence
The previous section examined the raw numbers of women and men participating in the arts. However, it is not always the person that is participating that made the decision to purchase the tickets. Keeping in mind that this study seeks to help marketers to target the most profitable segments, it is more important to understand who is making the decision to purchase the tickets.
For example, if a wife buys a ticket for herself and her husband, the participation count would be one female and one male attending; however, considering only the bottom line, this is two tickets purchased by a female and zero purchased by a male.
Princeton University’s Center for Arts and Cultural Policy Studies’ Ongoing Research
Project on Trends in Arts Participation has studied spousal influence on arts participation. In a working paper from this project, Craig Barton Upright argues that men’s attendance is more strongly influenced by spousal characteristics than women’s attendance (Upright 2004). Upright derives this theory from examining the responses of a sub-sample of married individuals that both participated separately in the 1992 Surveys of Public Participation in the Arts4. The study first looked at couples’ responses to seven questions posed whether the individual participated in a given arts activity. Depending on the response of the individuals in the couple, the attendance was rated as “Attended Alone” or “Both Attended.”
The couples’ race, age, sex, education, income, urban location, arts socialization – previous identified factors significant to arts participation as an individual – were also examined.
A spouse’s level of arts socialization and educational attainment proved to be correlated with an individual’s reported attendance. For a married man, the level of arts socialization and educational attainment reported by his wife proved to be a strong indicator of his participation,
4 Upright notes he used the 1992 SPPA study because the 1997 study only captured one respondent per household. The following 2002 SPPA study (published after Upright’s working paper) too only captured one respondent per household. The shift of the SPPA’s surveying households rather than individuals precludes the examination of more recent spousal participation data and the comparison of this data over time. 29 Katie Leimbach even after controlling for his own individual factors significant to arts participation. When attending without his wife, the level of arts socialization and educational attainment of his wife still proved to be a reliable predictor of his participation. For a married woman, the level of arts socialization and educational attainment reported by her husband did not have as great an effect on her attendance, with or without her spouse (Upright 2004). Upright concludes with postulating that not only one’s spouse, but also one’s social network strongly influences an individual’s decisions to attend arts events.
LaPlaca Cohen’s Culture Track 2007 provides some insight into Upright’s suggestion that social networks strongly influence arts participation. The study reports that the greatest influence on one’s decision to attend a cultural event is “spouse/partner is interested” with 51% of frequent attendees (defined by the study as attending at least one high arts event a month) and
40% of infrequent attendees citing this as “very influential.” The second greatest influence reported was “invited by friends/family” with 46% of frequent attendees and 30% of infrequent attendees citing this as “very influential” (LaPlaca Cohen 2007: page 12). However, the report does not examine gender in relation to these dominant social and personal influences. It could be suspected that it is the men responding that the spouse/partner/friend/family member influencing the attendance is female, but there is not data to indicate the gender of the influencer.
Scheff’s 2007 Arts Marketing Insights cites a case where an arts organization recognized and leveraged women’s spousal influence on attendance. The Joffrey Ballet in Chicago recognized the importance of focusing its marketing efforts on women because according to
Executive Director Jon Teeuwisen, its “audience is 60% female, and most of the men who come do so because women bring them (page 41).” The Joffrey’s female audience is comparable to the national female audiences for ballet. According to the NEA’s SPPA studies, 68.4% of ballet attenders were female in the 2002 study and 66.1% in the 1997 study (see Table 13).
30 Katie Leimbach
The Joffrey changed its advertisements to show less athleticism, which appeals to men, and more grace and inspiration, which attracts women who are the ticket buyers. The Joffrey also reached out to women by starting a women’s board, and organized affinity groups which featured professional women as keynote speakers before its performances (Bernstein 2007).
Role in Viral Marketing
Women have shown to be influential in the arts attendance of both males and females.
As noted in the previous section, the Culture Track 2007 study found that the second greatest influence (to “spouse/partner interested”) in one’s decision to attend a cultural event was “invited by friends/family.” Although the report does not examine gender in relation to these dominant social and personal influences, it could be suspected that the friend/family member influencing the attendance is female with the research that has been conducted on viral marketing in the arts.
With the publication of Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point, the theory viral marketing through social networks gained attention of the entire marketing industry (Haeker 2007). The arts sector too recognized the merit of the idea that it is the few “connectors, mavens, and salesman” as Gladwell coined or “initiators, influentials, and activators” as other publications have referenced (Brown 2004; Haeker 2007) that marketers want to reach since they have been responsible for driving the social trends that pull in later adapters. The 2006 National Arts
Marketing Project Conference in Los Angeles Arts Marketing & Earned Income Strategies That
Work brought a new awareness to arts marketers that viral marketing tactics are not only effective, but also an economical solution to tight marketing budgets. Soon arts organizations sought to reach these influential individuals through ambassador programs, MySpace and
Facebook pages, blogs, etc.
According to the Classical Music Consumer Segmentation Study, as reported in Alan
Brown’s Initiators and Responders: A New Way to View Orchestra Audiences, the lucrative 31 Katie Leimbach initiators that arts marketers are seeking to target are more likely than those who are not initiators to be, among other demographic variables, female (60% vs. 53%) (Brown 2004: page 3).
Although this study only looks at classical music consumers, it does shed insight into the gender of arts initiators. If women are significantly more likely than men to be initiators, then targeting female audiences becomes an even more appealing strategy.
The Female Consumer
Women, deemed the “Chief Purchasing Agents” by consumer behaviorists, make over
80% of the purchasing decisions in the United States (Bernstein 2007; Gogoi 2005; Humistion
2008; Quinlan 2003). This is because women now head more households and women’s incomes are increasing rapidly while men’s are remaining steady:
Women’s decision-making authority has grown in part because more households are headed by women – 27% as last count, a fourfold increase since 1950. Their buying power has grown, too. In the past three decades, men’s median income has barely budged – up just 0.6% - while women’s has soared 63%. Some 30% of working women out earn their husbands, notes Martha Barletta, author of Marketing to Women: How to Understand, Reach and Increase Your Share of the Worlds Largest Market Segment. And 75% of women with the title of vice-president or higher at Fortune 500 companies out earn their husbands, bringing home on average 68% of household income, according to Barletta (Gogoi 2005).
Marketers have come to realize women’s dominance as consumers, and so much research has been done to better understand their wants and needs and how to reach them.
Research on female consumer behavior dates as far back as the mid 1970’s. In 1976,
Rosemary Scott published The Female Consumer in which she emphasized the importance of the female to marketers and attempted to persuade marketers to alter some of their more traditional approaches to women’s markets (Golden 1977). According to Golden’s review, the book focused on “female attitudes towards shopping, in-store behavior, and responses to pricing,
32 Katie Leimbach branding, product innovation, and convenience items.” Concluding her review, Golden states
“This book is unique in its area, and makes provocative reading.”
The idea of better understanding and marketing to women is not longer a “unique and provocative” concept. A February 11, 2008 article on female Web use in Advertising Age demonstrated this awakening of the importance of the female consumer by asking the reader to type in “What do women want?” into a Google search page, showing that you will get 160,000 hits opposed to searching “What do men want?” which yields only 27,000 hits. There was even a major motion picture focused on the female consumer. The movie What Women Want, released in 2000 staring Mel Gibson and Helen Hunt, explored how women’s thoughts and desires should play into marketing strategies amid a comic plot.
Women’s Internet Usage
Technology has become an important tool for marketers to reach target segments.
Websites, e-newsletters, social networking sites, blogs, etc. have become integral means for promotion and new channels of distribution for all types of enterprises. The Pew Internet &
American Life Project’s October-December 2007 survey showed that 75% of the adult American population goes online, including 74% of women and 76% of men (Pew Internet & American
Life Project 2007). Pew’s January-June 2005 survey showed that 67% of the adult American population goes online, including 66% of women and 68% of men (Fallows 2005). In just under two and a half years, Internet usage by American adults increased 11.9%, with women’s usage increasing 12.1% and men’s usage increasing 11.8%. Fallows notes that total number of women using the Internet is greater than men even though the percentage is slightly lower because the total female population is greater. Looking back to the Census’ 2006 Annual Estimate of the
Population in Table 1, adult Internet usage by gender can be converted from percentage to population as shown in Table 18 that follows: 33 Katie Leimbach
Table 18: Conversion from Percentage to Number of American Adult Internet Usage by Gender
% Goes Online (Pew Conversion % of Total 2007 Population Internet & American to # Goes Adult Online Segment Estimate5 Life Project 2007) Online Users U.S. Adult Women (born before 1996) 123,225,559 74% 91,186,914 50.52%
U.S. Adult Men (born before 1996) 117,507,536 76% 89,305,727 49.48% Difference 5,718,023 -2% 1,881,186 100.00%
This conversion shows that although 74% of women go online compared to 76% of men, there are actually close to 2 million more women than men using the Internet, constituting
50.52% of the adult Internet usage in America.
Women are responsible for an even larger proportion of online spending than usage according to Martha Barletta, who in her 2005 publication Marketing to Women, references a
2003 Goldman Sachs/ Harris Interactive/ Nielsen/ Net Ratings report that showed that women were responsible for 60% of total online spending (page 102). She notes that in 2006, 63% of women had access to the Internet, and almost every single one of them (62%) buy things online at least once a year, and predicted that women will “evolve fairly rapidly into a 60 to 65% majority of online users, accounting for perhaps 70 to 75% of the online spending (page 200).”
Johnson and Learned reference a 2002 national consumer study by Simmons Market Research
Bureau that found that “late Baby Boomer and early Gen Y women, in particular, were more likely than men of all ages to agree that they are doing more shopping on the Internet than ever before (page 176).”
Most agree that when the Internet began, the majority of its users were men and by 2000 the gender ratio was nearing fifty-fifty (Barletta 2005; Fallows 2005; Forsythe). Some say women were slower to adopt Internet usage because they perceived greater risks (Fallows 2005;
5 The 2007 Annual Estimates of the Population were released in May 2008. These estimates were not available at the time the “National Population” section of this research was composed (January 2008) and so the 2006 Estimates were used in the analysis. Because the 2007 Estimates are available at the time of “The Female Consumer” composition (June 2008) and yield a more accurate number of female Internet users (since the percentages were reported by the Pew report on February 15, 2008), the 2007 Estimates were used as shown in Table 18. 34 Katie Leimbach
Forsythe; Johnson 2004). Martha Barletta’s postulates that “by 2008, though, there will be roughly 10 million more women online than men (page 102).” Although female Internet usage is surpassing male Internet usage today, the gender ratio is still about equal as shown in Table 18 and the greater number of women that go online correlates to the greater number of women in the national population.
The Pew Internet & American Life Project’s publication How Women and Men Use the
Internet by Deborah Fallows found that compared with men, women use the Internet to: send and receive email (94% of respondent in Sept. 2005), get maps and directions (87% of respondents in
Feb. 2004), look for health and medical information (74% of respondents in Dec. 2002), use websites to get support for health or personal problems (66% of respondents in Nov. 2004), and get religious information (34% of respondents in Nov. 2004) (page ii).
The study also found that the growth rate for women’s participation in the following online activities is greater than the growth rate for men: using government websites (increased
32% from 2000 to 2004), getting religious information (increased 48% from 2000 to 2004), watching video clips (increased 30% from 2000 to 2004), getting news (increased 25% from
2000 to 2005) and maps or directions (increased 13% from 2001 to 2004), and researching products (increased 12% from 2000 to 2005) (page iii).
In 2002, the National Endowment for the Arts added questions to the Survey of Public
Participation in the Arts about individual’s “frequency of reading about, discussing, or accessing information about the arts via the Internet (page 60).” Overall, 54% of the SPPA’s respondents
(109 million adults) reported using the Internet and 19% (one third of Internet users) reported exploring at least one arts topic on the Internet (page 3). Internet users were then asked a series of questions to identify the types of arts explored. Table 19 that follows shows the greatest
35 Katie Leimbach percentage of adults exploring music and literature on the Internet (National Endowment for the
Arts 2004):
Table 19: U.S. Adults Use of the Internet to Explore the Arts, 2002
Internet Topic Percent Exploring Music 13.1% Literature 9.2% Visual Arts 5.9% Theater 4.1% Dance 2.0% Opera 1.3%
Six years later in 2008, it can be postulated that a much greater proportion of adults use the Internet to explore the arts because 75% of Americans now report they go online (Pew
Internet & American Life Project 2007) compared to the 54% of the 2002 SPPA’s respondents that reported using the Internet. However, the 2002 SPPA study is the most recent arts participation study available from the NEA. Additionally, the study does not indicate the genders of the respondents that reported using the Internet to explore the arts.
LaPlaca Cohen’s more recent Culture Track 2007 study, found that “increasingly, the
Internet plays a dominant role in how audiences interact with culture (page 30).” However, this report like the NEA’s 2002 SPPA study does not examine gender in relation to how audiences interact with culture. The sample size for the study was only 3,815 respondents, much smaller than the NEA’s 2002 SPPA study whose sample size was over 17,000. Additionally, the survey was conducted online, which would cause a bias towards respondents that are more frequent
Internet users.
In the Greater Philadelphia region, insight into the proportion and extent to which women are going online to explore the arts can be extrapolated from the demographics of the Greater
Philadelphia Cultural Alliance’s (GPCA) PhillyFunGuide.com users and FunSavers subscribers.
GPCA’s PhillyFunGuide.com is a website featuring information about the region’s upcoming 36 Katie Leimbach cultural, entertainment, and sporting events. The site contains information on thousands of events and attractions, and the content found on PhillyFunGuide.com is also fed to events calendars for 16 partner sites including WXPN, KYW News Radio, www.gophila.com, and the
Philadelphia Convention & Visitors Bureau (Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance 2008).
GPCA’s FunSavers is a weekly discount email program. Launched in 2003, it offers ½-price tickets to various regional cultural events. Every Thursday, consumers receive 10-35 half-price offers to a variety of events including theater, music, dance, and film (Greater Philadelphia
Cultural Alliance 2008).
According to GPCA, the PhillyFunGuide.com site brings 120,000 unique visitors per month, and receives 500,000-750,000 page views per month. The FunSavers program has
67,000 weekly subscribers. In a recent GPCA survey of 8,000 PhillyFunGuide.com users and
FunSavers subscribers, 76% of respondents were female.
Targeting Women on the Internet
“Whether she’s a tech-aware Gen Yer, a career-focused Gen Xer or an active-in- retirement Mature woman, you should pay attention to how to reach her online, because she’s bound to be there (Johnson 2004: pages 185-186).” It is crucial for organizations to have well- designed websites and effective e-marketing strategies to reach all their audiences, but even more so when targeting women. Research has shown that 65% of consumers will not shop on a poorly designed site, even if it is the site of a favorite brand. Furthermore, 30% of the women surveyed will not use a poorly designed site, and will even cease off-line purchases from a company with a poor site, compared to 27.2 % of men (Johnson 2004).
How do organizations then create websites and e-marketing strategies that effectively target female audiences? Most authors agree that women’s shopping behavior online does not align with shopping in retail stores (Barletta 2005; Johnson 2004; Viveiros 2008). In Marketing 37 Katie Leimbach to Women, Martha Barletta argues that websites and other electronic marketing tools warrant
“special consideration when marketing to women, because a number of its benefits are directly aligned with the tenets of female lifestyle and culture (page 100).” The following themes were consistently identified as important tools for reaching women online: email, information, images, communities, convenience, and humanized technology.
Barletta identifies the ability to connect with others as one of the greatest values women find in using the Internet. “Women say they value the Internet because it strengthens their bonds with others; 60% of women claim that the Internet has improved their connection to parents, siblings, and children (page 100).” As noted previously, Pew’s study found that most women use the Internet to send and receive email (94% of respondent in Sept. 2005). Barletta identifies email as a primary way for women to connect with others online and build relationships. “Email enables women to keep in touch with family and friends more easily than traditional letters and phone calls (page 102).”
Johnson and Learned also note that email is the entrance point for many women into
Internet usage, and they then integrate it into their lives as a tool to connect with others and as a mode of consumer research. “Most women begin their online experience by tapping into the
Internet as friend by trying email. Then, they quickly get up to speed and seamlessly incorporate email and online research into their daily connections with family, friends, colleagues, and businesses making the Internet their tool and advisor, as well (page 176).”
Therefore, to effectively connect to women online, organizations must be able to collect and maintain a database of current email addresses, incorporate email marketing into marketing plans, and foster ways for women to connect with each other though email marketing efforts.
38 Katie Leimbach
Information
In “Gender Marketing Web Design Differences,” Carrabis claimed one of the main online gender differences for women is that online they purchase strategically. Carrabis attributes this to the influence on women of serviceability over time. While men make purchasing decisions “based strongly on immediately or present needs,” women want to know the product or service “will meet their immediate needs, mid-term and even their long-term needs (page 1).”
Barletta notes that, “women are information seekers and use the Internet to research products and make comparisons (page 102).” She also notes women notice every detail, have opinions on those details, and appreciate being asked about those opinions. She suggests asking women in your target market for feedback on your product/service.
Johnson and Learned point out that women and men actually switch shopping behaviors online. Women use the Internet as a shopping tool and advisor, which is the opposite of their more social offline behavior, often “where roaming the aisles can be considered a carefree, relaxing pleasure or a social occasion with friends (page 177).” In contrast to women’s information-seeking behavior online, men are more likely to meander and surf online.
Therefore, to entice women to shop for its products and services online, an organization must provide detailed information about the merchandise sold online and onsite and also facilitate her research by providing ways to compare similar merchandise offered by the organization and its competitors.
Images
Barletta argues website communication must be personalized. She suggests ways to do this on your website include showing images of people, especially on the homepage, and particularly women since connection is the greatest value women find in using the Internet. “For
39 Katie Leimbach women the Internet is about connecting, and if there are no people on your website, then how are they going to connect to your brand? Show people on the homepage (preferably women) (page
104).”
In a recent article by Beth Negus Viveiros in Chief Marketer, Michele Miller and Holly
Buchanan, authors of a new book titled The Soccer Mom Myth, shared their thoughts on what marketers are doing right and wrong to connect with women online. A site the authors thought was doing an excellent job of marketing to women is Dove’s. Miller and Buchanan noted the use of images of women their target audience could identify with, which goes along with
Barletta’s argument that website communication must be visually personalized towards women.
Carrabis argues websites must capture a women’s eye before she acts upon it, which goes along with Barletta’s idea that images, particularly ones that your female audience can connect with are important.
Therefore, to connect with a target female audience online, an organization must create a website that utilizes images prominently, both visually and verbally, with which women can identify.
Communities
Many authors site the ability for women to reach out to others with similar interests and issues as appealing aspect of using the Internet (Barletta 2005; Carrabis 2006; Johnson 2004;
Quinlan 2003). “Women are online for both community and shopping. In December 2002 alone, women’s online communities, including sites like iVillage.com and Womensforum.com, reached approximately 30% of all female Internet users age 25 to 64, attracting a total of nearly
35 million visitors (Johnson 2004).” Dove has an active community that even uploads their own videos about body image (Viveiros 2008).
40 Katie Leimbach
Online communities, such as blogs, chart rooms, forums, message boards, and social networks associated with organizations not only allow women to connect with others throughout the world with similar interests, but also help drive women back to an organization’s site, build the brand, and create loyalty. Therefore, it is important for organizations to provide these communities through their e-marketing efforts to keep women coming back, and they also foster word-of-mouth marketing for the organization within the communities.
Convenience
In Just Ask a Women, Mary Lou Quinlan claims the “best technological advancement is the one that eases her life (page 177).” Barletta notes “women are using the Internet more because it can be accessed at any time from virtually any place as a woman takes on many tasks and roles (page 102).” Johnson and Learned point out that although “women make or influence the bulk of consumer purchases in the United States today, they no longer have much time to devote to traditional shopping, driving from store to store, so they are heading online” and so to serve their preferences and to keep these savvy women lingering longer, websites have to have superior functionality and create good customer experiences (page 173).
Because women are turning to online shopping since they have less time to shop onsite, and because the Internet can be accessed at anytime and while multitasking, it is paramount for organizations to provide an online retail experience that is quick and simple for her.
Humanized Technology
Although women are using the Internet a great deal for its convenience, they still want the ability to reach a person in the organization for questions and transactions. Johnson and
Learned cite lack of personal contact (via an 800 number, online chat, or email) and difficulty in reaching or finding customer service staff (with confusing phone tree messages) as one of the most common customer service weakness noted by female consumers (page 180).
41 Katie Leimbach
Quinlan discusses a research study conducted by her company, Just Ask a Woman, in
May 2002 that asked nearly 4,000 women about the role of the Internet in the shopping experience. The study found that two thirds of women use the Internet to browse, research, and compare products (reinforcing the previous section on information for product research).
However, 40% said they use the information researched to make the purchase offline (page 168).
Therefore, it is important for organization to provide clear an accessible ways for its online browsers to make a phone call for questions and orders, and also still provide convenient onsite channels of distributions.
42 Katie Leimbach
Definition of Terms
Blog – an online diary; a personal chronological log of thoughts published on a webpage
(Webster's New Millennium™ Dictionary of English 2008a)
Facebook – a social networking website, launched on February 4, 2004, where users can join networks organized by city, workplace, school, and region to connect and interact with other people. People can also add friends and send them messages, and update their personal profile to notify friends about themselves (Wikipedia contributors 2008a).
GoPhila.com – a website created and managed by the Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing
Corporation (GPTMC) that provides regional itineraries, dining and nightlife information, events, news, and hotel booking options. Gophila.com is also the provider of tourism content to phila.gov, the City of Philadelphia's municipal website (Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing
Corporation 2008b).
MySpace – a social networking website, launched in August 2003, offering an interactive, user- submitted network of friends, personal profiles, blogs, groups, photos, music, and videos for teenagers and adults internationally (Wikipedia contributors 2008b).
PATCO (Port Authority Transit Corporation) – a rapid transit system, which runs between
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and Camden County, New Jersey. It runs underground in
Philadelphia, crosses the Delaware River on the Benjamin Franklin Bridge, runs underground in
Camden, then runs above ground in New Jersey until the east end of the line (Wikipedia contributors 2008c). 43 Katie Leimbach
PCVB (Philadelphia Convention & Visitors Bureau) – a private nonprofit membership corporation, the official Tourism Promotion Agency for the City of Philadelphia, and the primary sales and marketing agency for the Pennsylvania Convention Center. The PCVB competes with its counterparts worldwide for convention and tourism business. The organization has departments dedicated to the multicultural, sports, and life sciences markets (Philadelphia
Convention & Visitors Bureau 2008).
Phlash – a $2 trolley operated by the Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corporation that runs from May through October between more than 20 of Philadelphia’s historic attractions and cultural institutions (Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corporation 2008a).
Podcast – a Web-based audio broadcast via an RSS feed, accessed by subscription over the
Internet (Webster's New Millennium™ Dictionary of English 2008b).
PPA (Philadelphia Parking Authority) – an organization of the City of Philadelphia responsible for managing parking and related traffic management programs, and building and operating parking lots and garages (Philadelphia Parking Authority 2008).
RSS (Rich Site Summary) – a family of Web feed formats used to publish frequently updated works—such as blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video—in a standardized format
(Wikipedia contributors 2008d).
44 Katie Leimbach
SEPTA (Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority) – a regional public authority that operates various forms of public transit — bus, subway and elevated rail, regional rail, light rail, and electric trolley bus — that serves 3.8 million people in and around Philadelphia (Wikipedia contributors 2008e).
Twitter – a free social networking and micro-blogging service, that allows its users to send and read other users' updates, which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length. Updates are displayed on the user's profile page and delivered to other users who have signed up to receive them (Wikipedia contributors 2008f).
Widget – an element of a graphical user interface such as a button or scroll bar; also, a module of software for a personalized webpage (Webster's New Millennium™ Dictionary of English
2008c).
45 Katie Leimbach
Procedure
To assess the degree to which a sample of nonprofit arts organizations market to women online, and to explore potentially beneficial tactics that are consistently missing, an evaluative framework for the fieldwork was created using the research discussed previously in this study.
The evaluative framework included the following research questions with associated survey questions that were assessed by the researcher by viewing a random sample of arts organization’s websites in the five counties of the Greater Philadelphia region.
1) Email Utilization – Does the art organization’s website utilize email well?
a. Can a visitor sign up for an e-newsletter on the website?
i. If so, is this on the homepage?
b. Can a visitor forward or recommend news or event information directly to a friend?
2) Information Availability – Does the art organization’s website provide informative
content on the art/cultural product?
a. Does the site include the art activity’s pricing?
b. Does the site allow for customers to post feedback/opinions?
c. Does the site compare the various product options it offers?
d. Does the site provide a map to the art activity’s location?
e. Does the site provide directions to the art activity’s location?
f. Does the site provide public transportation information?
g. Does to site provide information on parking?
h. Does the site provide childcare information?
i. Does the site provide dining information?
j. Does the site provide links to sites related to the featured art activity?
46 Katie Leimbach
3) Use of Women in Images – Does the art organization’s website visually speak to a female
audience?
a. Does the site use images of women?
i. If so, are the images of women on the homepage?
4) Online Community Presence – Does the art organization host a virtual community related
to the organization?
a. Is there a blog or other means for visitors to post feedback or communicate with each
other?
b. Does the organization have its own:
i. Facebook page?
ii. MySpace page?
5) Convenience Offerings – Does the art organization’s website make purchasing tickets
and the actual art experience more convenient?
a. Can tickets/admission be purchased on the site?
b. Can related merchandised be purchased on the site?
c. Is there an extra fee for online purchases?
d. Does the site offer gift-giving options?
6) Degree of Humanized Technology – Does the art organization’s website allow for a
visitor to easily contact a human representative?
a. Is a customer service phone number provided on the site?
i. If so, is it on the homepage?
ii. If so, is there a name associated with the number to call?
iii. Are hours when a representative can be reached via telephone indicated?
47 Katie Leimbach
b. Is a customer service email address provided on the site?
i. If so, is it on the homepage?
ii. If so, is there a name associated with the email address?
To achieve parity, organizations were limited to 501 (c)(3) public charities, with stand- alone websites, and with annual operating budgets greater than $1,000,000. The following sample of 34 organizations’ websites, representing a breath of cultural disciplines with comparable resources, was surveyed.
Table 20: Sample of 34 Arts Organizations in Greater Philadelphia Region Whose Websites Were Evaluated
Operating Organization Website Budget6 1 Academy of Natural Sciences www.ansp.org $24,859,543 2 African American Museum in Philadelphia www.aampmuseum.org $1,614,510 3 Arden Theatre Company www.ardentheatre.org $3,923,266 4 Barnes Foundation www.barnesfoundation.org $6,217,659 5 Brandywine River Museum www.brandywinemuseum.org $44,136,482 6 Bristol Riverside Theatre www.brtstage.org $1,364,372 7 Constitution Center, National www.constitutioncenter.org $20,249,228 8 Eastern State Penitentiary Historic Site www.easternstate.org7 $3,213,380 9 Elmwood Park Zoo www.elmwoodparkzoo.org $1,869,520 10 Fabric Workshop and Museum www.fabricworkshop.org $1,882,325 11 Franklin Institute http://www2.fi.edu/ $36,019,471 12 Freedom Theatre, Inc., New www.freedomtheatre.org $1,006,523 13 Independence Seaport Museum www.phillyseaport.org $6,398,642 14 Kimmel Center www.kimmelcenter.org $36,002,888 15 Lantern Theater Company www.lanterntheater.org $1,008,485 16 Liberty Museum, National www.libertymuseum.org $4,549,366 17 Mann Center for the Performing Arts www.manncenter.org $7,859,641 18 Michener Art Museum, James A. www.michenermuseum.org $8,614,796 19 Museum of American Jewish History, National www.nmajh.org $18,619,338 20 Opera Company of Philadelphia www.operaphilly.org $7,972,244 21 Pennsylvania Ballet Association www.paballet.org $14,476,590 22 Pennsylvania Horticultural Society www.pennsylvaniahorticulturalsociety.org $41,727,189 23 Philadanco www.philadanco.org $1,152,292 24 Philadelphia Live Arts Festival and Philly Fringe www.livearts-fringe.org $3,948,590 25 Prince Music Theater ("American Music Theater Festival") www.princemusictheater.org $4,919,410 26 Philadelphia Museum of Art www.philamuseum.org $297,921,364 27 Philadelphia Orchestra www.philorch.org $45,050,000 28 Philadelphia Theatre Company www.philadelphiatheatrecompany.org $12,465,495 29 Philadelphia Zoo www.philadelphiazoo.org $49,624,475 30 Rosenbach Museum & Library www.rosenbach.org $5,617,947 31 Tyler Arboretum, John J. www.tylerarboretum.org $1,128,702 32 Walnut Street Theatre http://walnutstreettheatre.org/ $18,255,558 33 Wilma Theater www.wilmatheater.org $2,761,155 34 Woodmere Art Museum www.woodmereartmuseum.org $2,865,522
6 Operating budget listed is as reported on most recent 990 available on www.guidestar.org on 8/9/2008. 7 Eastern State’s homepage has links to two separate sites - one for day tours and one for the haunted house. Evaluation was done on the day tour site since those programs are year-round and the haunted house is seasonal. 48 Katie Leimbach
Answers were recorded on a spreadsheet and then analyzed. Data was colleted between
September 7 and October 18, 2008. Collection was minimized to the smallest time period possible in an effort to achieve parity among organizations since websites are rapidly updated.
49 Katie Leimbach
Limitations of the Study
The findings from this study are intended to be a tool for nonprofit arts markers to more effectively and efficiently use their scarce marketing budgets to target women to gain the greatest earned income for their organizations. This study does not seek to understand the male audiences, or to diversify the gender makeup of patrons.
This study primarily examines the “high-arts” (operas, ballets, art museums, theaters, classical music, etc.) in the Greater Philadelphia region because information on these traditional arts organizations is more readily available. The Greater Philadelphia region is examined because it is the most accessible area for the researcher, and has a large concentration of world- class arts organizations.
Finally, this study limits its scope to audience members that must make a purchase to take part in the nonprofit art organization’s activities, because motivations are not consistent between free events/activities and those that have a fee.
50 Katie Leimbach
Evaluation of 34 Arts Organizations’ Websites in the Greater Philadelphia Region
Email Utilization
Of the 34 organizations surveyed, 20 or 58.8 % had the capability for visitors to sign up for an e-newsletter on their website. Although the Philadelphia Museum of Art did not have this capability, one could however sign up to receive updates via RSS feeds, Twitter, or subscribe to podcasts on the homepage.
Of those 20, only 2 organization or 10% – the National Constitution Center and the James
A. Michener Museum – did not have their e-newsletter signup on their homepages. The National
Constitution Center did, however, have its e-newsletter signup on all sub pages.
The ability for a woman to sign up for an e-newsletter on an arts organization’s website is not only a way to fulfill her need to receive information about the organization, but also a way for the organization to collect her email address and use it to target her in later e-campaigns.
Homepage prominence makes the signup easier for her to find, and more likely for her to signup since she might not travel to other sub pages.
5 or 14.7% of surveyed organizations had a way for visitors to forward or recommend news or event information directly to a friend. Each of the 5 though had a unique tool. On the
Mann Center for the Performing Arts’ homepage, there was the option to “e-mail this page to a friend.” On the Museum Shop site of the National Museum of American Jewish History’s website, when any item is selected, there was the option to "e-mail to a friend." On the
Pennsylvania Horticultural Society’s website, there was an option on all pages but the homepage to "email this page." On the Philadelphia Orchestra’s website, visitors could download monthly e-newsletter archives and forward them to a friend. On all production pages of the Walnut Street
Theater’s website, a visitor could "e-mail this event to a friend." There was also a "Bookmark
51 Katie Leimbach and Share" widget on each production page. Walnut Street’s device to email an event to a friend would be very useful for targeting women. It is a way for women to connect with each other because it gives them the ability to recommend an outing to a show of interest to friends.
Table 21: Sample’s Email Utilization on Website
Can a visitor forward or Can a visitor sign up If so, is this recommend news or event Organization for an e-newsletter on on the information directly to a the website? homepage? friend? 1 Academy of Natural Sciences No NA No 2 African American Museum in Philadelphia Yes Yes No 3 Arden Theatre Company Yes Yes No 4 Barnes Foundation No NA No 5 Brandywine River Museum No NA No 6 Bristol Riverside Theatre Yes Yes No No, though on all other 7 Constitution Center, National Yes sub pages. No 8 Eastern State Penitentiary Historic Site Yes Yes No 9 Elmwood Park Zoo Yes Yes No 10 Fabric Workshop and Museum Yes Yes No 11 Franklin Institute No NA No 12 Freedom Theatre, Inc., New No NA No 13 Independence Seaport Museum Yes Yes No 14 Kimmel Center Yes Yes No 15 Lantern Theater Company No NA No 16 Liberty Museum, National No NA No Yes, option on homepage to 17 Mann Center for the Performing Arts Yes Yes "e-mail page to a friend." 18 Michener Art Museum, James A. No No No Yes, in Museum Shop site, when any item is selected, there us the option to "e-mail 19 Museum of American Jewish History, National No NA to a friend." 20 Opera Company of Philadelphia Yes Yes No 21 Pennsylvania Ballet Association Yes Yes No Yes, option on all pages but homepage to "email this 22 Pennsylvania Horticultural Society No No page." 23 Philadanco No NA No 24 Philadelphia Live Arts Festival and Philly Fringe Yes Yes No 25 Prince Music Theater ("American Music Theater Festival") Yes Yes No No, though can receive updates via RSS feeds, Twitter, or subscribe to 26 Philadelphia Museum of Art podcasts on homepage. NA No Yes, can download monthly e-newsletter archives and 27 Philadelphia Orchestra Yes Yes forward them to a friend. 28 Philadelphia Theatre Company Yes Yes No 29 Philadelphia Zoo Yes Yes No 30 Rosenbach Museum & Library Yes Yes No 31 Tyler Arboretum, John J. No NA No Yes, option on all production pages to "e-mail this event to a friend" and "Bookmark and 32 Walnut Street Theatre Yes Yes Share" widget. 33 Wilma Theater Yes Yes No 34 Woodmere Art Museum No NA No
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Information Availability
32 or 94.1% of surveyed organizations had pricing for their art activity on their website.
The National Museum of American Jewish History site did not include any pricing information, and Philadanco had links to the Kimmel Center and Ticket Philadelphia on the "Links" page where ticketing information could be found, but nothing indicated that is where visitors would need to go for pricing.
5 or 14.7% of surveyed organizations had a means to collect feedback/opinions from customers, and only 1 actually had a means to post for other visitors to view. The African
American Museum in Philadelphia and the Philadelphia Zoo had links for Visitor Surveys.
Although this is a means for customers to tell the organizations about their experiences, other visitors cannot access that feedback. The Opera Company of Philadelphia had a Bulletin feature, though there was not one post. The Philadelphia Orchestra had a link for visitors to submit comments, but only specifically on their new website.
The Philadelphia Museum of Art came closest to a way for visitors to submit feedback for others to review. Their "My Museum" application included various forums in which visitors can participate. However, one must register with the site first, and at the time of viewing, only one forum was begun on September 17, 2008 with very little activity.
These organizations, including the 5 that are making attempts to provide vehicles for customer feedback, are really missing the opportunity to tap into women’s tendencies to notice every detail, have opinions on those details, and appreciate being asked about those opinions.
9 or 26.5% of surveyed organizations compared the various product options they offer on their website. However, many of the museums surveyed only offer general admission (GA) and thus do not have various products to compare. Many performing arts organizations have a multitude of products, since ticket prices vary by day, time, show, etc., but did not have a means
53 Katie Leimbach for easy comparison because the visitor must first choose the show, date, and time before the ticket price appears. Many of the performing arts organizations that did compare product options, those options were only the seating areas and price differences for those areas. A unique aspect of the Philadelphia Orchestra’s site was a "Ways to Save on Concert Tickets" page which included information on Student Rush, group discounts, and a community ticket program supported by PECO.
As noted previously in this study, “women are information seekers and use the Internet to research products and make comparisons (Barletta 2005: page 102).” If arts organizations are not providing their pricing and comparison of their product offerings, potential female customers may drift to competitors’ sites that do provide the information they are seeking, or even abandon their search for that type of product.
Table 22: Sample’s Information Availability on Website I
Does the site allow for Does the site compare Does the site include art Organization customers to post the various product activity’s pricing? feedback/opinions? options it offers? 1 Academy of Natural Sciences Yes No No 2 African American Museum in Philadelphia Yes Yes, Visitor Survey No (only GA) 3 Arden Theatre Company Yes No No, must chose show 1st. 4 Barnes Foundation Yes No No (only GA) 5 Brandywine River Museum Yes No No (only GA) 6 Bristol Riverside Theatre Yes No Yes 7 Constitution Center, National Yes No No (only GA) 8 Eastern State Penitentiary Historic Site Yes No No (only GA) 9 Elmwood Park Zoo Yes No No (only GA) 10 Fabric Workshop and Museum Yes No No (only GA) 11 Franklin Institute Yes No Yes 12 Freedom Theatre, Inc., New Yes No No 13 Independence Seaport Museum Yes No No (only GA) Yes, though only seating 14 Kimmel Center Yes No options for a specific show. 15 Lantern Theater Company Yes No Yes 16 Liberty Museum, National Yes No No (only GA) No, but no upcoming performances (summer 17 Mann Center for the Performing Arts Yes No venue). 18 Michener Art Museum, James A. Yes No No (only GA) 19 Museum of American Jewish History, National No No No Yes, Bulletin, but no Yes, though only seating 20 Opera Company of Philadelphia Yes posts. options for a specific show. Yes, though only seating 21 Pennsylvania Ballet Association Yes No options for a specific show. No (only GA to Flower 22 Pennsylvania Horticultural Society Yes No Show) No, links to Kimmel and Ticket Philadelphia where ticketing information can 23 Philadanco be found, but nothing No No 54 Katie Leimbach
indicates where you would need to go for pricing. 24 Philadelphia Live Arts Festival and Philly Fringe Yes No No (only GA) Prince Music Theater ("American Music Theater 25 Festival") Yes No No, must chose show 1st. Yes, "My Museum" application where after a visitor registers, can participate in various forums. Currently only one forum begun on Sept. 17, 2008 with very 26 Philadelphia Museum of Art Yes little activity. No (only GA at the time) Yes, though only seating options for a specific show; does have "Ways to Save on Concert Tickets" page which includes information on Student Rush, group discounts, and a Yes, but only feedback community ticket program 27 Philadelphia Orchestra Yes on new website. supported by PECO. 28 Philadelphia Theatre Company Yes No Yes 29 Philadelphia Zoo Yes Yes, Visitor Survey Yes 30 Rosenbach Museum & Library Yes No No (only GA) 31 Tyler Arboretum, John J. Yes No No (only GA) Yes, though only seating 32 Walnut Street Theatre Yes No options for a specific show. 33 Wilma Theater Yes No No, must chose show 1st. 34 Woodmere Art Museum Yes No NA
One area of information in particular that women seek online is directional. As mentioned previously in this study, The Pew Internet & American Life Project found that, compared with men, women use the Internet more to get maps and directions (87% of respondents in Feb. 2004) (page ii).
With free mapping sites, such as Google Maps, Yahoo Maps, and MapQuest, providing a map and directions to an art organization’s location is one of the simplest enhancements that can be made to its website to help meet the needs of its female audience. 23 or 67.6% of surveyed organizations provided a map. The Franklin Institute site, though it does not include a map to the museum’s location, it does provide a map of the museum. The Philadelphia Zoo’s site has both a map to the zoo’s location and a map of where the various animals are housed. These maps of the organizations’ exhibitions are helpful for women, particularly mothers who want to plan out the day’s route for anxious children before they even arrive.
55 Katie Leimbach
The Philadelphia Orchestra, instead of providing any directional information on its own site, it drives visitors to the websites of its three venues – The Academy of Music, The Kimmel
Center, and The Mann Center for the Performing Arts. The thought may be why recreate this information that exists on the venue organizations’ websites, but the Orchestra does not have control of these sites. If the sites are down, there is incorrect information posted, or if information needs to be added, the Orchestra either cannot do anything or has to take the time to go through the other organizations, in the meantime possibly losing frustrated customers.
29 or 85.3% of surveyed organizations provided directions to the art activity’s location.
Of those 29, 10 or 34.5% also included direct links to a mapping site. This is a useful tool because the visitor then only has to enter their starting location since the organization’s address is already set up as the ending location. Freedom Theater, however, only provided a link to
Google Maps. Independence Seaport Museum included directions by foot, by boat, and by ferry, which is an appropriate addition for this museum that sits on Penn’s Landing.
22 or 64.7% of surveyed organizations provided public transportation information. A few of the organizations that did not were located in suburban areas where it is likely that one could not get to the arts organization via public transportation, such as the Elmwood Zoo, the
Michener Museum, and Tyler Arboretum. A number of organizations included links to public transportation organizations’ sites, such as SEPTA, Amtrak, PATCO and New Jersey Transit.
The Philadelphia Museum of Art provided a link straight to SEPTA’s “Trip Planner” application.
Some also provided information on their own shuttles or tourist transportation, such as the Philly
Phlash. Eastern State Penitentiary provided information on the Big Bus, Trolley Works, and
Bike Tours where a visit to the Penitentiary could be incorporated.
26 or 76.5% of surveyed organizations provided information on parking. Bristol
Riverside Theatre and Pennsylvania Ballet included parking information under frequently asked
56 Katie Leimbach questions, which is not intuitively where a visitor would look. The Academy of Natural Sciences included a map that showed nearby parking facilities that also indicated the direction of one-way streets, which is very useful to a visitor not familiar with driving in the city. Its site also included a link to the Philadelphia Parking Authority. Lantern Theater Company not only included a listing of nearby parking facilities, but also the distance each is from the theater. The Michener
Museum’s parking information nebulously stated there is "on-street parking and a nearby parking lot."
Table 23: Sample’s Information Availability on Website II
Does the site Does the site Does the site Does the site provide provide provide a map to provide public Organization directions to the art information on the art activity’s transportation activity’s location? parking? location? information?
Yes, also Yes, Septa bus, appears on map Yes, plus links to Google subway, and with one-way Maps, Live Search Regional Rail streets indicated, 1 Academy of Natural Sciences Yes Maps, and MapQuest. plus Philly Plash. and links to PPA. 2 African American Museum in Philadelphia No Yes Yes Yes Yes, plus links to Google 3 Arden Theatre Company Yes Maps. Yes Yes 4 Barnes Foundation Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes, plus links to Amtrak's Brandywine 5 Brandywine River Museum Yes Yes Connection. No Yes, though under FAQs in "Box Office" link Yes, plus links to Google Yes, plus link to not "Directions" 6 Bristol Riverside Theatre Yes Maps. SEPTA. link. Yes, plus links to Google 7 Constitution Center, National No Maps. Yes Yes Yes, plus information on the Philly Phlash and Big Bus, Trolley Works, and Bike Tours where a visit to Yes, plus links Yahoo ESP could be 8 Eastern State Penitentiary Historic Site Yes Maps. incorporated. Yes Yes, plus links to an "Interactive Map," which is a link to Valley Forge's CVB site's map provided Yes, plus links to Yahoo 9 Elmwood Park Zoo by Map Network. Maps. No No Yes, plus links to 10 Fabric Workshop and Museum Yes Yes SEPTA. Yes No, though is a Yes, plus links to map of the Yes, plus links to Google map of local 11 Franklin Institute Museum. Maps. Yes parking facilities. No, only link to Google 12 Freedom Theatre, Inc., New Yes Maps. No No
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Yes, including by foot, 13 Independence Seaport Museum Yes boat, and ferry. Yes Yes Yes, including the Kimmel garage fees, and a link to PPA's Yes, SEPTA and map with list of 14 Kimmel Center Yes Yes PATCO. nearby garages. Yes, including Yes, plus links to distance to SEPTA and theater from 15 Lantern Theater Company Yes Yes PATCO. each lot. 16 Liberty Museum, National Yes Yes Yes Yes 17 Mann Center for the Performing Arts Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes, though only says "On-street parking and a Yes, plus links to nearby parking 18 Michener Art Museum, James A. No MapQuest. No lot." Museum of American Jewish History, 19 National Yes Yes No Yes Yes, plus links to Philly Phlash and PATCO (though no link 20 Opera Company of Philadelphia No Yes to SEPTA). Yes 21 Pennsylvania Ballet Association No No No Yes 22 Pennsylvania Horticultural Society No Yes No Yes 23 Philadanco No No No No No, only general Philadelphia Live Arts Festival and Philly directions to 24 Fringe No Philadelphia. No No Prince Music Theater ("American Music 25 Theater Festival") Yes Yes No Yes Yes, plus links to SEPTA’s Trip 26 Philadelphia Museum of Art Yes Yes Planner. Yes No, information No, information on 3 on 3 No, information on performance performance 3 performance No, information on 3 venues, but must venues, but must venues, but must performance venues, link to their link to their link to their external but must link to their external sites for external sites for sites for more external sites for more more more 27 Philadelphia Orchestra information. information. information. information. 28 Philadelphia Theatre Company Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes, plus Zoo Shuttle schedule Yes, plus map of (from 30th St. & 29 Philadelphia Zoo the zoo. Yes Visitors Center). Yes Yes, plus links to SEPTA, Amtrak, 30 Rosenbach Museum & Library Yes Yes and NJ Transit. Yes Yes, plus links to Google 31 Tyler Arboretum, John J. Yes Maps and MapQuest. No No Yes, plus link to Google 32 Walnut Street Theatre No Maps. No Yes 33 Wilma Theater Yes Yes Yes Yes 34 Woodmere Art Museum Yes Yes Yes No
Other areas of information that women are likely seeking when visiting arts organizations’ websites are childcare information, if they are mothers or plan to attend an arts activity with a mother, dining options for before, during, or after the arts activity, and more information related to the arts organization’s discipline or mission.
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Not one of the 34 surveyed organizations provided information on childcare for attendees. Although these organizations may not have the capacity to offer childcare themselves, there are organizations that they could partner with in order to provide women with childcare recommendations thereby removing a prevalent barrier to entry for women.
Several organizations, such as the Academy of Natural Sciences, Elmwood Park Zoo,
Franklin Institute, and Philadelphia Zoo, have programs or exhibitions that are specifically designed for children, and so it is less likely that childcare would be a barrier to entry for women to these organizations. However, women may be concerned with accommodations for their children while at the arts activity. The Academy of Natural Sciences provided information on their website about stroller access, changing areas, restrooms, and lockers. The Franklin Institute provided information on changing stations. The Philadelphia Zoo provided information on stroller rental and what to do in the case of a missing child.
Several organizations published policies on their websites that would deter women from bringing children, or more blatantly suggested not bringing children. The Philadelphia Museum of Art’s policies state that strollers are not permitted in the galleries, and bags 8 x 10 x 12 inches and larger must be checked which would rule out a diaper bag with accessories needed for young children throughout a visit. On the Pennsylvania Ballet’s FAQ’s, under the FAQ "Can I bring children?" it stated, "Children under four years old are not admitted to either theater for regular performances. Children under three are not permitted for The Nutcracker. All children must have a ticket and cannot sit on a parent's lap." On the Opera Company of Philadelphia’s FAQ’s, under the FAQ "May I bring my children?" it stated, "Some operas contain material that may require parental discretion. Due to the length of most productions, we do not recommend bringing small children. If you feel your child is able to handle the length and content of a production, we do require a ticket for each individual entering the theater regardless of age. In
59 Katie Leimbach order to ensure that all patrons may enjoy the opera without distraction, anyone who creates a disturbance may be asked to leave. Please see theater etiquette for more information. "
18 or 52.9% of surveyed organizations provided dining information on their website, though 8 of those or 44.4% only provided onsite dining information. The organizations that only provided onsite dinning information probably did so in order to promote internal business and not loose customers to external restaurants. These organizations also tended to be museums
(Academy of Natural Sciences, Brandywine River Museum, Franklin Institute, and Philadelphia
Museum of Art) that would have the capacity and infrastructure for onsite dinning, whereas most of the organizations that listed external dinning options did not have their own onsite dining facilities competing. Several of the organizations that listed external dinning options also had a partnership established where audience members receive a special discount or offer, and provided the restaurants’ contact information, type of cuisine, and website links.
9 or 26.5% of surveyed organizations provided links to sites related to the featured art activity. However, many of the organization’s links were more general than specifically related to the organization’s art. The African American Museum in Philadelphia links to a nearby hotel, the visitor survey, and The Clay Studio. Bristol Riverside Theatre’s links are mostly to corporate sponsors. Independent Seaport Museum links to PCVB and gophila.com. Wilma Theater links to other theaters and arts/civic organizations in Philadelphia.
Table 24: Sample’s Information Availability on Website III
Does the site provide links to Does the site provide childcare Does the site provide dining Organization sites related to information? information? featured art activity? No, though children are a target market. Academy of Natural Information on stroller access, changing 1 Sciences areas, restrooms, and lockers is provided. Yes, but only onsite café. Yes Yes, though only hotel, survey, African American and The Clay 2 Museum in Philadelphia No No Studio. Yes, lists 10 Restaurant Partners, with contact information, descriptions of the 3 Arden Theatre Company No restaurants, and links to their websites. No
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4 Barnes Foundation No No No Brandywine River 5 Museum No Yes, but only Museum Restaurant. No Yes, though 6 Bristol Riverside Theatre No No mostly sponsors. Constitution Center, Yes, only Museum Restaurant but does 7 National No includes menu with prices. Yes Yes, reports there is outdoor seating available for visitors bringing a bag lunch, but only water and soda are available for purchase on site. Also lists 3 partner restaurants that offer Lunch Packages to ESP visitors and 22 other nearby restaurants with contact Eastern State information, descriptions of the Penitentiary Historic Site restaurants, and links to their websites 8 (ESP) No on the "Neighborhood" page. Yes 9 Elmwood Park Zoo No, though children are a target market. No No Fabric Workshop and 10 Museum No No No No, though children are target market and Yes, only onsite café and bistro, but link 11 Franklin Institute information on changing stations. to gophila.com. Yes Freedom Theatre, Inc., 12 New No No No Yes, links to Independence Seaport PCVB & 13 Museum No Yes, links to 5 local restaurants. gophila.com. Yes, but only onsite restaurants (does No, though does include menus with prices and link to include links to Open Table.com to make reservations resident 14 Kimmel Center No for Cadence). companies. Yes, lists 32 Dining Partners with Lantern Theater contact information, type of cuisine, and 15 Company No links to their websites. No 16 Liberty Museum, National No No No Mann Center for the Yes, but only onsite restaurant, plus 17 Performing Arts No info on concession stands and bars. No Michener Art Museum, 18 James A. No Yes, but only onsite restaurant. No Museum of American 19 Jewish History, National No (strollers permitted) No Yes No, plus the FAQ "May I bring my children?" states, "Some operas contain material that may require parental discretion. Due to the length of most productions, we do not recommend bringing small children. If you feel your child is able to handle the length and content of a production, we do require a ticket for each individual entering the theater regardless of age. In order to ensure that all patrons may enjoy the opera without distraction, anyone who creates a Yes, lists 43 nearby restaurants, with Opera Company of disturbance may be asked to leave. Please contact information, type of cuisine, and 20 Philadelphia see theater etiquette for more information. " distance from venue. No No, plus the FAQ "Can I bring children?" states "Children under four years old are not admitted to either theater for regular performances. Children under three are not permitted for The Nutcracker. All children Pennsylvania Ballet must have a ticket and cannot sit on a 21 Association parent's lap." No No Yes, under "Where to Eat" states, "Food can be purchased at the Flower Show throughout the Pennsylvania Convention Center. There are Snack Bars at the rear of the main exhibit hall, and full dining services located on Level 3 above the exhibition halls in the Overlook Café. You will also find Pennsylvania numerous restaurants in the area 22 Horticultural Society No immediately surrounding the No 61 Katie Leimbach
Convention Center, including Reading Terminal Market and in nearby Chinatown." 23 Philadanco No No Yes Philadelphia Live Arts 24 Festival and Philly Fringe No No No Prince Music Theater Yes, lists 16 Restaurant Partners, with ("American Music contact information, descriptions of the 25 Theater Festival") No restaurants, and links to their websites. No No, though strollers are not allowed in Philadelphia Museum of certain galleries, and bags 8 x 10 x 12 inches Yes, only onsite restaurants and cafes, 26 Art must be checked. but does include menus with prices. No No, gives information on 3 performance No, gives information on 3 performance venues (Kimmel, Mann, Academy of Music), venues (Kimmel, Mann, Academy of but must link to their sites for information on Music), but must link to their sites for 27 Philadelphia Orchestra "planning you visit." information on "planning you visit." No Philadelphia Theatre Yes, Dining Guide lists 17 nearby 28 Company No restaurants, with contact information No No, though children are a target market. No, only mentions concessions Provides information on stroller rental and throughout and picnic tables for guests 29 Philadelphia Zoo what to do in the case of a missing child. who bring food. No Rosenbach Museum & 30 Library No No No 31 Tyler Arboretum, John J. No No No Yes, Dining Guide lists 72 restaurants in the city, with contact information and 32 Walnut Street Theatre No type of cuisine. No Yes, links to other theaters Yes, lists 27 nearby restaurants, with and arts/civic contact information, type of cuisine, and organizations in 33 Wilma Theater No distance from venue. Philadelphia. 34 Woodmere Art Museum No No No
Use of Women in Images
The most transparent way an organization can target women is to use images of women on their website with which their female audience can identify. As Barletta argued, “For women the Internet is about connecting, and if there are no people on your website, then how are they going to connect to your brand? Show people on the homepage (preferably women) (page 104).”
Only 3 or 8.8% of surveyed organizations used images of on their website, and only 2 of those 3 used those images on the homepage. The Horticultural Society of Pennsylvania prevalently utilized images of women engaged in their activities, and really conveyed how women enjoy participating in their activities. The women in the images included a range of ages, and also a few showed mothers participating with their children. Below are effective images of women found when the site was surveyed, which also included images on the homepage and the homepage’s banner: 62 Katie Leimbach
The Philadelphia Museum of Art had a few images of female visitors throughout their website, though they seemed to be more coincidental than deliberately used to market to women.
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The African American Museum in Philadelphia’s homepage had a rotating banner that included a number of effective images of women, though only one could be captured.
The remaining surveyed organizations primarily used images related to their exhibitions and productions. A few included children, and some others included images of their buildings and grounds.
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Table 25: Sample’s Use of Women in Images
If so, are they on the Organization Does the site use images of women? home- page? No, most images are related to exhibitions, some images of 1 Academy of Natural Sciences children NA 2 African American Museum in Philadelphia Yes Yes 3 Arden Theatre Company No, all images are of the productions NA 4 Barnes Foundation No, all images are of Dr. Barnes, artwork, or gardens NA 5 Brandywine River Museum No, all images related to artwork and grounds NA 6 Bristol Riverside Theatre No, all images related to the productions NA No, most images are related to exhibitions, some images of 7 Constitution Center, National children NA 8 Eastern State Penitentiary Historic Site No NA 9 Elmwood Park Zoo No, all images related to the animals NA 10 Fabric Workshop and Museum No, all images related to exhibitions and building NA 11 Franklin Institute No, all images related to exhibitions NA 12 Freedom Theatre, Inc., New No NA No, only images are on rotating banner, which include a 13 Independence Seaport Museum wedding, a boat, tourists outside, and a few exhibitions NA 14 Kimmel Center No, all images are of the productions NA 15 Lantern Theater Company No, all images are of the productions NA 16 Liberty Museum, National No, all images related to exhibitions NA 17 Mann Center for the Performing Arts No, all images related to the productions and venue NA 18 Michener Art Museum, James A. No, all images related to exhibitions and building NA 19 Museum of American Jewish History, National No, all images related to exhibitions and building NA 20 Opera Company of Philadelphia No, all images are of the productions NA 21 Pennsylvania Ballet Association No, all images are of the productions NA 22 Pennsylvania Horticultural Society Yes Yes 23 Philadanco No, all images are of the productions NA 24 Philadelphia Live Arts Festival and Philly Fringe No, all images are of the productions/artists NA 25 Prince Music Theater ("American Music Theater Festival") No, all images are of the productions NA Yes, most images of exhibitions, though there are a few 26 Philadelphia Museum of Art female visitor images No 27 Philadelphia Orchestra No, all images are of the productions NA 28 Philadelphia Theatre Company No, all images are of the productions NA No, all images related to the animals; some images of 29 Philadelphia Zoo children NA 30 Rosenbach Museum & Library No, all images related to exhibitions and building NA 31 Tyler Arboretum, John J. No, all images related to grounds NA 32 Walnut Street Theatre No, all images are of the productions NA 33 Wilma Theater No, all images are of the productions NA 34 Woodmere Art Museum No, all images related to exhibitions and building NA
Online Community Presence
7 or 20.6% of surveyed organizations had a blog on their website. However, a number of the blogs were not being updated regularly and/or did not have much participant activity. The
African American Museum in Philadelphia had a link to a President’s blog, though when the link was clicked, only gibberish appeared. The Arden Theatre only had 3 comments on their blog, though it appeared to be a relatively new application. The Bristol Riverside Theatre had an announcement in its current online newsletter, though very little activity when the link was
65 Katie Leimbach clicked. Both the Kimmel Center and the Philadelphia Live Arts Festival and Philly Fringe had blogs with rich content and very active participants. The Philadelphia Zoo had an interesting blog application with three different curators hosting their own discussions, however each had very little activity.
15 or 44.2% of surveyed organizations had their own Facebook page. Some were set up as an “individual,” and so had “friends,” some were set up as a “group,” and so had “members,” and others were set up as “organizations,” and so had “fans.” No matter what the setup, the number of people connected to the organization via Facebook showed the reach it had in this particular online network. Connections ranged from just 20 fans for the Independence Seaport
Museum, to and an incredible 981 fans for the Philadelphia Orchestra. An interesting observation was that some of the organizations with the smallest budgets had some of the largest number of connections. For instance, Lantern Theater Company that had an annual operating budget of only $1,008,485 had 266 members, and Bristol Riverside Theatre with a budget of only $1,364,372 had 251 friends. Managing these social networks costs only staff time, and so it is a great way for the smaller organizations that may have little or no marketing budgets to reach out to new audiences.
14 or 41.2% of surveyed organizations had their own MySpace page. All MySpace accounts have “friends.” Connections ranged from just 1 friend for the Elmwood Park Zoo and for the Opera Company of Philadelphia, to and an incredible 3,366 friends for the Kimmel
Center, followed next by 1,176 friends for the Philadelphia Orchestra (this second-highest total being almost one-third of the Kimmel’s connections). MySpace also publishes the last login for an account, which is an indicant of the recency of its content. Some organizations had not logged into their account in over two years, such as Eastern State Penitentiary, whose last login was 1/31/2006 and Elmwood Park Zoo, whose last login in was 8/2/2006. Others’ last login was
66 Katie Leimbach the last business day before the account was reviewed, such as Arden Theatre Company and
Kimmel Center, whose last login was 9/5/2008. Like as on Facebook, some of the organizations with the smallest budgets had some of the largest number of connections. For instance, Bristol
Riverside Theatre again with a budget of only $1,364,372 had 107 friends, and Arden Theatre
Company with an annual operating budget of $3,923,266 had 120 friends.
Table 26: Sample’s Online Community Presence8
Does the Does the organization organization have Organization Is there a blog? have its own MySpace its own Facebook page? page? 1 Academy of Natural Sciences No Yes, 55 fans No Yes, there's a President's blog, 2 African American Museum in Philadelphia though the content is gibberish. No No Yes, though only one post with 3 Yes, last login 9/5/2008 3 Arden Theatre Company comments (looks relatively new). Yes, 211 fans and 120 friends 4 Barnes Foundation No No No 5 Brandywine River Museum No No No Yes, blog announced in current newsletter, though not much Yes, last login 8/28/2008 6 Bristol Riverside Theatre activity on it yet. Yes, 251 friends and 107 friends 7 Constitution Center, National No Yes, 26 members No Yes, though last login 1/31/2006, and only 15 8 Eastern State Penitentiary Historic Site No No friends Yes, though last login 8/2/2006, and only 1 9 Elmwood Park Zoo No No friend 10 Fabric Workshop and Museum No No No 11 Franklin Institute No No No Yes, though last login 4/21/2008, and only 26 12 Freedom Theatre, Inc., New No No friends 13 Independence Seaport Museum No Yes, 20 fans No Yes, archives since Sept. 2005, very active, and includes links to Yes, last login 9/5/2008 14 Kimmel Center its MySpace and Facebook pages. Yes, 145 fans and 3,366 friends 15 Lantern Theater Company No Yes, 266 members No 16 Liberty Museum, National No No No Yes, last login 8/18/2008 17 Mann Center for the Performing Arts No No and 57 friends 18 Michener Art Museum, James A. No No No Yes, last login 9/3/2008 19 Museum of American Jewish History, National Yes Yes, 30 members and 268 friends Yes, though last login 3/29/2008, and only 1 20 Opera Company of Philadelphia No Yes, 146 fans friend Yes, last login 9/3/2008 21 Pennsylvania Ballet Association No Yes, 247 fans and 1,117 friends 22 Pennsylvania Horticultural Society No No No 23 Philadanco No Yes, 101 fans No Philadelphia Live Arts Festival and Philly Yes, archives since Aug. 2007, Yes, last login 9/3/2008 24 Fringe and very active. Yes, 459 members and 113 friends Prince Music Theater ("American Music 25 Theater Festival") No No No 26 Philadelphia Museum of Art No No No
8 As of September 7, 2008 review. 67 Katie Leimbach
Yes, last login 9/4/2008 27 Philadelphia Orchestra No Yes, 981 fans and 1,176 friends Yes, last login 9/4/2008 28 Philadelphia Theatre Company No No and 516 friends Yes, 3 by different curators, though Kristen and Aliza have not posted since Jan. 08, and Carlos Yes, last login 8/1/2008, 29 Philadelphia Zoo not since Sept. 08. Yes, 72 fans but only 5 friends 30 Rosenbach Museum & Library No No No 31 Tyler Arboretum, John J. No No No 32 Walnut Street Theatre No No No 33 Wilma Theater No Yes, 109 fans No 34 Woodmere Art Museum No No No
Convenience Offerings
19 or 55.9% of surveyed organization sold tickets or admission on their website. A few organizations that did not sell general tickets did, however, have capabilities for special offerings. For example, the Franklin Institute did not sell museum admission on its website, but did have a separate website for the Real Pirates special exhibition, on which tickets could be purchased. The Rosenbach also did not sell museum admission on its website, but tickets to special performances, such as Wild Things Whirligig children’s musical, could be purchased through the online Museum Shop’s site.
8 or 23.5% of surveyed organization sold related merchandise on their website. The
Museum of American Jewish History’s website even has the capability for a visitor to create a registry, add items to the registry, and for gift givers to choose from items remaining on the registry. The Philadelphia Orchestra also had a unique online product – recent Philadelphia
Orchestra concerts, archival recordings, and commercially released CDs could be downloaded for a fee from its Online Music Store.
16 or 47.1% of surveyed organizations charged an extra fee for online purchase. 4 or
11.8% of surveyed organizations did not indicate if there was an extra fee. 14 or 41.2% of surveyed organizations did not sell either tickets/admission or related merchandise online. Not one of the organizations offered free shipping or processing/handling. The Philadelphia Zoo was
68 Katie Leimbach the only organization that mentioned there was no fee for tickets since they did not mail them – options were to print or pick up at Will Call.
9 or 26.5% of surveyed organizations offered gift-giving options on their website. A number of other organizations advertised gift products, though prompted visitors to call or purchase at the organization.
Because women today have less and less free time as they juggle careers and families, it is paramount for arts organizations to provide an online retail experience that is quick and simple. The ability for a women to buy tickets to an arts activity online gives her the freedom to obtain tickets before her visit, thus making the entrance easier, and also gives her the opportunity to purchase anytime, while doing anything. The ability for women to purchase related merchandise and gifts online too provides purchasing convenience, but also enables her to share the arts experience with others. The amount charged for this online convenience may deter her from not only purchasing online, but perhaps from purchasing at all if calling or traveling to the organization is not feasible during her busy days.
Table 27: Sample’s Convenience Offerings
Can tickets/ Can related Is there an extra fee Does the site offer admission be merchandise be Organization for online gift-giving purchased on the purchased on purchases? options? site? the site? 1 Academy of Natural Sciences No No NA No 2 African American Museum in Philadelphia No No NA No Yes, Gift Certificates in any denomination or 3 Arden Theatre Company Yes No NA ticket packs. 4 Barnes Foundation Yes Yes Not indicated No 5 Brandywine River Museum No No NA No Yes, 08-09 subscriptions & Yes, $3 handling fee 6 Bristol Riverside Theatre single tickets. No for tickets. No Yes, $2.50 per order 7 Constitution Center, National Yes No charge for tickets. No 8 Eastern State Penitentiary Historic Site No No NA No 9 Elmwood Park Zoo No No NA No 10 Fabric Workshop and Museum No No NA No No, though can for No, "Store" Pirates special heading, but exhibition (separate does not link 11 Franklin Institute site). anywhere. NA No 12 Freedom Theatre, Inc., New Yes No Yes, $2 fee for tickets. No 13 Independence Seaport Museum No No NA No
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Yes, Gift Certificates for $10, Yes, $5.50 handling then $25 14 Kimmel Center Yes No fee per ticket. denominations. No, must call to purchase Gift 15 Lantern Theater Company Yes No Not indicated Certificates. 16 Liberty Museum, National No No NA No Yes, Gift Certificates in any 17 Mann Center for the Performing Arts Yes No Not indicated denomination. Yes, $3 processing and handling fee for 18 Michener Art Museum, James A. No Yes tickets. No Yes, between $5.95 Yes, and can be and $37.95 shipping Museum of American Jewish History, added to a charges for Yes, can search for 19 National No registry. merchandise. items on a registry. Yes, $5.50 handling 20 Opera Company of Philadelphia Yes No fee per ticket. No Yes, Gift Certificates for $10, then $25 denominations and "Point Pass" for Yes, $5.50 handling $125 redeemable fee per ticket; no extra for two Parquet fee indicated for store seats to any 21 Pennsylvania Ballet Association Yes Yes purchases. performance. Yes, between $2.50 and $18 shipping charges for 22 Pennsylvania Horticultural Society Yes No merchandise. No No, has links to Kimmel and Ticket Philadelphia, but does not prompt visitors to buy tickets through 23 Philadanco these sites. No NA No Yes, though only Philadelphia Live Arts Festival and Philly close to and during 24 Fringe annual festival. No Not indicated No Prince Music Theater ("American Music 25 Theater Festival") Yes No NA No Yes, service charge of $2.50 per ticket for Yes, gift members and $3 per memberships at ticket for any level are nonmembers; available and gift between $8 and $55 membership “in a shipping charges for box” which includes 26 Philadelphia Museum of Art Yes Yes merchandise. a museum mug. Yes, Online Music Store where performances Yes, Gift can be Certificates for $5, downloaded for Yes, $5.50 handling 10, 25, 50, 75, 100, 27 Philadelphia Orchestra Yes a fee. fee per ticket. 150, 200, 250. No, there is a "Gift Certificates" page, Yes, $6 handling fee though must call to 28 Philadelphia Theatre Company Yes No per ticket. purchase. Yes, between $6.95 and $97.95 shipping charges on store purchases. No fee for tickets since options are to print or pick up 29 Philadelphia Zoo Yes Yes at Will Call. No
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No, though tickets to special performances can Yes, between $3.95 be purchased and $10 shipping through online charges for 30 Rosenbach Museum & Library store. Yes merchandise. No 31 Tyler Arboretum, John J. No No NA No Yes, $6 convenience charge per ticket plus $1.75 to $25 processing fee for Yes, $140 Gift delivery depending on Certificate for two 32 Walnut Street Theatre Yes No method. tickets. Yes, Gift Yes, $4.50 handling Certificates in any 33 Wilma Theater Yes No fee per ticket. denomination. 34 Woodmere Art Museum NA (free) No NA No
Degree of Humanized Technology
All 34 of the surveyed organizations provided a customer service number on their website. However, only 29 or 85.3% posted the phone number on the homepage. The ones that did not, required visitors to click “Contact Us” to retrieve the organization’s phone number. Not one of the organizations had a name associated with the phone number. However, the
Independence Seaport Museum, Lantern Theater Company, Philadelphia Live Arts Festival and
Philly Fringe, Philadelphia Theatre Company, and the Rosenbach Museum and Library did provide direct numbers or extensions for staff members on contact pages. The Philadelphia Zoo provided direct department numbers.
7 or 20.6% of surveyed organizations indicated on their website the hours when a representative can be reached by phone. Lantern Theater Company, Opera Company of
Philadelphia, and Philadelphia Orchestra’s hours were only within business hours, which could be inconvenient for a woman who cannot make a call during her buys working day or day caring for her children. Bristol Riverside Theatre, Philadelphia Live Arts Festival and Philly Fringe, and Philadelphia Theatre Company had extended hours during show days. The Kimmel Center had the greatest call availability, with its Call Center being open daily from 9am-8pm.
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Table 28: Sample’s Degree of Humanized Technology I
Is a customer If so, is there a Are hours when a service phone If so, is it on the name associated representative can be Organization number provided homepage? with the number reached by telephone on the site? to call? indicated? 1 Academy of Natural Sciences Yes Yes No No 2 African American Museum in Philadelphia Yes Yes No No 3 Arden Theatre Company Yes Yes No No No, must click 4 Barnes Foundation Yes "Contact Us" No No 5 Brandywine River Museum Yes Yes No No Yes, Administrative Office: Mon.-Fri. from 9:30AM to 4:30pm; Box Office: Mon.-Fri. from 9:30am-4:30pm; extended and weekend 6 Bristol Riverside Theatre Yes Yes No hours on show days. 7 Constitution Center, National Yes Yes No No 8 Eastern State Penitentiary Historic Site Yes Yes No No 9 Elmwood Park Zoo Yes Yes No No 10 Fabric Workshop and Museum Yes Yes No No 11 Franklin Institute Yes Yes No No 12 Freedom Theatre, Inc., New Yes Yes No No No, but direct numbers for staff provided on 13 Independence Seaport Museum Yes Yes "Contact Us" page. No Yes, Box Office is open daily from 10am-6pm. The Call Center is open daily from 9am-8pm. Visitor Services, Mon.– 14 Kimmel Center Yes Yes No Fri., 9am-5pm. No, but extensions for staff provided on "Staff Directory" Yes, Mon.-Fri.: 10am- 15 Lantern Theater Company Yes Yes page. 6pm. 16 Liberty Museum, National Yes Yes No No No, must click 17 Mann Center for the Performing Arts Yes "Contact Us" No No 18 Michener Art Museum, James A. Yes Yes No No Museum of American Jewish History, 19 National Yes Yes No No Yes, Administrative Office: 9am-5pm, Mon.- Fri.; Subscriber Services- 9:30am- 20 Opera Company of Philadelphia Yes Yes No 4:30pm, Mon.-Fri. No, must click 21 Pennsylvania Ballet Association Yes "Contact Us" No No No, must click 22 Pennsylvania Horticultural Society Yes "Contact Us” No No No, must click 23 Philadanco Yes "Contact Us" No No Yes, Box Office: pre- festival hours: 1-7pm, No, but extensions festival hours: Sun.- for staff provided Thurs. 12-9pm, Fri. & Philadelphia Live Arts Festival and Philly on "Festival Staff & Sat. 11am-9pm, Labor 24 Fringe Yes Yes Board" page. Day 12-7pm. Prince Music Theater ("American Music 25 Theater Festival") Yes Yes No No No, must click "Information", 26 Philadelphia Museum of Art Yes then "Contacts" No No No, must click Yes, Mon.-Fri., 9am- 27 Philadelphia Orchestra Yes "Contact Us" No 5pm
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Yes, Box Office: Between Productions, Mon.- Fri.-10am-5pm, Sat. & Sun.-Closed; During Productions: Mon.- Fri., 10am to No, but extensions show time, Sat.-Sun., for staff provided 12pm to show time; on "Staff Directory" Administrative-Mon.-Fri., 28 Philadelphia Theatre Company Yes Yes page. 9:30am-5:30pm. No, but direct No, must click numbers for 29 Philadelphia Zoo Yes "Contact Us" departments. No No, but direct numbers for staff provided on "Staff 30 Rosenbach Museum & Library Yes Yes & Board" page. No 31 Tyler Arboretum, John J. Yes Yes No No 32 Walnut Street Theatre Yes Yes No No 33 Wilma Theater Yes Yes No No 34 Woodmere Art Museum Yes Yes No No
22 or 64.7% of surveyed organizations provided a customer service email address on their website. Some organizations that did not provide a customer service email address, did provide a form visitors could fill out and submit with inquires, or provided a list of staff or department direct email addresses.
11 of those 22 organizations listed the customer service email address on the homepage.
Many of the organizations that did not, listed it instead on their “Contact Us” page. Only Bristol
Riverside Theatre had a name associated with its customer service email address. The site directed "General and Casting" inquiries to Adam Goldstein's email, and then emails for other staff members were also provided. The Michener Museum and Pennsylvania Ballet had addresses that looked like they were for a specific person – [email protected] and [email protected] – yet the names were not indicated. A number of the organizations did provide a list of staff members with titles and their associated email addresses. This would help a visitor to contact a person directly that works in the department relating to their inquiry.
Because lack of personal contact and difficulty in reaching or finding customer service staff are among the most common customer service weakness noted by female consumers, it is paramount for organizations to provide clear an accessible ways for women to call or email a specific person at times that are convenient to them. The surveyed organizations that did not 73 Katie Leimbach provide phone numbers or email addresses on their homepage, did not give a contact name associated with them, or provide reachable hours, may be frustrating their potential female customers and hindering their sales, both online and onsite.
Table 29: Sample’s Degree of Humanized Technology II
Is a customer If so, is it on service email If so, is there a name associated with the Organization the address provided on email address? homepage? the site? No, there is a webmaster@ address, but then ones for various departments on the contact 1 Academy of Natural Sciences Yes Yes page. 2 African American Museum in Philadelphia Yes No No, there is only a general info@ address. No, must click "Directions No, there are only general info@ and tickets@ 3 Arden Theatre Company Yes and Contact" addresses. No, there is an info@ address, but then ones No, must click for various departments on the "Contact Us" 4 Barnes Foundation Yes "Contact Us" page. No, there is an inquiries@ address, but then ones for the staff members on the "Museum 5 Brandywine River Museum Yes Yes Staff Directory" page. Yes, "General and Casting" inquiries are No, must click directed to Adam Goldstein's email, and then 6 Bristol Riverside Theatre Yes "Contact Us" emails for other staff members are provided. No, there is a general feedback@ address for No, must click feedback and questions plus addresses for 7 Constitution Center, National Yes "Contact Us" various departments. No, must click No, there is an info@ address under "Contact 8 Eastern State Penitentiary Historic Site Yes "Contact Us" Us," but then ones for staff members also. No, only staff email 9 Elmwood Park Zoo addresses. NA NA No, only a form to fill out and submit with 10 Fabric Workshop and Museum inquiries. NA NA No, there is a guestservices@ address for No, must click general information and also ones for the 11 Franklin Institute Yes "Contact" Membership and Development departments. No, only a form to fill out and submit with No, must click 12 Freedom Theatre, Inc., New inquiries. "Contact Us" NA No, only staff email 13 Independence Seaport Museum addresses. NA NA 14 Kimmel Center Yes Yes No, there is only a general info@ address. No, there is an email@ address on homepage and on the "Contact Us" page, but then ones 15 Lantern Theater Company Yes Yes for staff members on "Staff Directory" page. 16 Liberty Museum, National Yes Yes No, there is only a general liberty@ address. 17 Mann Center for the Performing Arts Yes No No, there is only a marketing@ address. No, there is a [email protected] address, which looks like a specific person, yet the name 18 Michener Art Museum, James A. Yes Yes is not indicated. Museum of American Jewish History, 19 National Yes Yes No, there is only a general nmajh@ address. No, only a form to fill out and submit with No, must click 20 Opera Company of Philadelphia inquiries. "Contact Us" NA No, there is a [email protected] address, No, must click which looks like a specific person, yet the name 21 Pennsylvania Ballet Association Yes "Contact Us" is not indicated. No, there's a form to No, must click No, there are only general department 22 Pennsylvania Horticultural Society fill out and submit with "Contact Us" addresses. 74 Katie Leimbach
inquiries, and direction to "email us questions about 24 different topics" which have hotlink addresses for various departments. No, only staff email 23 Philadanco addresses. NA NA No, there is a general info@ address, but then Philadelphia Live Arts Festival and Philly ones for staff members on the "Festival Staff & 24 Fringe Yes Yes Board" page. Prince Music Theater ("American Music 25 Theater Festival") Yes Yes No, there is only a general info@ address. No, only department 26 Philadelphia Museum of Art email addresses. NA NA No, must click No, there is general philadelphia_orchestra@ 27 Philadelphia Orchestra Yes "Contact Us" address, but then ones for staff members also. No, there is a boxoffice@ address, but then No, must click ones for staff members on the "Staff Directory" 28 Philadelphia Theatre Company Yes "Contact Info" page. No, only a "Contact No, must click No, there are only general department 29 Philadelphia Zoo Us" form. "Contact Info" addresses. No, there is a general info@ address, but then ones for the staff members on the "Staff & 30 Rosenbach Museum & Library Yes Yes Board" page. 31 Tyler Arboretum, John J. Yes Yes No, there is only a general info@ address. No, only a form to fill out and submit with No, must click 32 Walnut Street Theatre inquiries. "Contact Us" NA No, only staff email 33 Wilma Theater addresses. NA NA No, only staff email 34 Woodmere Art Museum addresses. NA NA
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Summary
The purpose of this study was to understand what marketing strategies nonprofit arts organizations could utilize to better target female audiences online. Since women make up the majority of arts audiences and are often a catalyst in men’s attendance, but there is relatively no literature that explores how nonprofit arts marketers can use this information to improve their marketing strategies, the researcher saw this as an important piece of arts marketing literature that was missing and warranted further exploration.
The study first examined the literature on the evolution of in the nonprofit arts marketing field, including demographic segmentation variables used by arts organizations to determine target markets, particularly gender. It then looked at the national and regional population and nonprofit arts audience participation. Finally, female consumer behavior in general and online was researched. To assess the degree to which a sample of nonprofit arts organizations market to women online, an evaluative framework was created using the literature and data that was researched.
The evaluative framework included assessing the following six areas by viewing the websites of a random sample of 34 nonprofit arts organizations, representing a breadth of disciplines, located in the five counties of the Greater Philadelphia region: email utilization, information availability, use of women in images, online presence community, convenience offerings, and degree of humanized technology.
Research questions with associated survey questions were developed to determine the degree to which the sample of arts organizations were marketing to women online. Answers were recorded and analyzed to show the potentially beneficial tactics for targeting women online that are consistently missing among nonprofit arts organizations in the Greater Philadelphia region. 76 Katie Leimbach
Conclusions and Implications
This study found that women are a lucrative target market for arts organizations, not only because they make up the majority of the national and regional populations, but also because they are already a large portion of those participating in arts activities, are a prominent influence in their husbands’ attendance, and tend more so than men to be initiators and activators.
This study also found that many of the beneficial tactics for targeting women online are consistently missing among nonprofit arts organizations in the Greater Philadelphia region, and thus likely missing nationally.
Although most of the surveyed organizations provided means for a visitor to sign up for an e-newsletter on their website, only a few had the capabilities for the visitor to forward or recommend an activity to a friend. Since women are the ones in a male/female relationship more likely to purchase tickets/admission to an arts activity, and are more likely than men to get friends and family to attend or become interested in arts programs, it is important for arts organizations to give women the tools needed to promote the organizations and their activities.
Most organizations provided ample information on their products, including pricing and directional information. Areas that were lacking were the ability for visitors to post feedback or compare products. Because women are information seekers, and use the Internet substantially for product research, it is important for organizations to directly provide this information or a woman may become frustrated looking for the answers herself. One significant barrier to entry for women, that none of these organizations was addressing on their websites, was childcare. A few of the organizations went as far as to tell women not to bring children, but did not recommend a childcare provider or offer care onsite. This is an opportunity that if an organization capitalized on it, could bring in a whole new segment of women that have put their cultural participation on hold until their children have grown.
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Another marketing strategy that most of the surveyed organizations were not utilizing was connecting to women with images of other women enjoying the organization’s activities.
Most focused on showing the artistic product, and did not use images of people at all.
Many of the organizations surveyed had some type of online community presence, though many have created accounts on Facebook, MySpace or established a blog, though did not seek out connections or are not keeping up these pages that appeared dormant. Without active content from the organization and participation from the community, women will not be enticed to visit.
Performing arts organizations that sell various tickets rather than visual arts organizations that sell general admission tended to use the Internet as a channel of distribution.
Humanized technology was also an area that most of the surveyed organizations needed to improve by better communicating all modes of reaching customer service, providing representative names, and making available more hours.
Because Internet offerings and technology is rapidly changing and arts organizations are adopting more of these tools everyday, this same study performed in a few years would likely yield new results. Also, since this study only examined Philadelphia organizations’ websites, further studies could be conducted to survey organizations in other metropolises. This study only looked at online communications tools. Other vehicles, such as brochures, signage, print advertisement, etc. could be examined. Additionally, female arts participants and non- participants could be interviewed to learn first-hand why they do or do not attend, and what website features entice them to participate in an arts activity. Arts marketers could be interviewed to learn if their organization is trying to target women, why or why not, how, what has been effective, and what has not.
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Finally, since this study only examined the female arts audience, a follow up study could be conducted to determine why men or less likely to attend an arts event, and how arts organizations could better market to them to not only make their audiences more balanced in terms of gender, but to also tap into a segment that may be more lucrative since many are not already participating.
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Appendices
A. 2007 Philadelphia Cultural List Cooperative Participant Roster
B. 2007 Philadelphia Cultural List Cooperative Common Demographics Report and Definitions
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