Liisa Uusitalo (Editor) B Liisa Uusitalo: Museum and visual art markets Museum and visual art markets art visual and Museum B-96 B-96 B-96 Liisa Uusitalo (Editor) Museum and visual art markets HELSINGIN KAUPPAKORKEAKOULUN JULKAISUJA B-96 © Liisa Uusitalo (Editor) Helsingin kauppakorkeakoulu ISSN 0356-889X ISBN 978-952-488-287-3 E-versio: ISBN 978-952-488-288-0 Helsingin kauppakorkeakoulu - HSE Print 2008 Table of contents Preface I The changing role of art museums 1 The roles of art museums – Challenges to their marketing 7 Liisa Uusitalo 2 Art museum image – An interplay of consumer and museum characteristics 21 Eeva-Katri Ahola 3 Cultural struggles and the image of art museum 32 Liisa Uusitalo and Eeva-Katri Ahola II Visual art market 4 Economic trends and changes in the art markets 57 Liisa Uusitalo and Annukka Jyrämä 5 Conceptual analysis of art market – towards and integrated framework 72 Annukka Jyrämä 6 Identifying organizational fields in art market – an institutional approach 91 Annukka Jyrämä 7 Can we find market orientation in the programming of performing arts organizations? 111 Hilppa Sorjonen III Art and museum consumers 8 On the consumption of pictorial art 133 Liisa Uusitalo 9 A Nostalgic visit to the heritage centers and museums 145 Maaria Linko 10 Can we segment art museum visitors? A study of segmentation based on consumer motives and preferences 157 Eeva-Katri Ahola and Liisa Uusitalo 11 The value creation of the virtual aesthetic communities 169 Michela Addis 12 Culture for the virtual consumer – The effect of digitalization on the marketing concept 181 Liisa Uusitalo 13 Consuming the city – places of identification and the spectacular 196 Liisa Uusitalo and Annukka Jyrämä IV Efficiency and effectiveness of museums 14 Market orientation and the effectiveness of art museums 211 Hilppa Sorjonen and Liisa Uusitalo 15 The mission of art museums - Exploring objectives of Finnish art museums 227 Mervi Taalas and Outi Uusitalo 1 PREFACE Liisa Uusitalo This book deals with the management and consumer studies of museums and other visual arts organizations. The idea for this research started in the end of 1980’s, when my research took a cultural turn. During the previous ten years I had been involved mainly with another collective good, environment, and studied the impact of consumer decisions on the environmental problems – very much inspired of my research years in West-Berlin in the beginning of 1980’s. However, for the time being, environmental issues were not yet very popular in the scientific community whether in the United States or Europe, and in marketing and consumer research conferences, my topics usually remained a curiosity. I wanted to turn to a new topic – consumption and marketing of cultural products – which, however, also proved to be rather unknown within economic and management studies. Later on, it has become a rather popular field, and many arts management programs and research projects have been started, especially in European universities. In the end of 1980’s I had learned to know the cultural sociologist Katarina Eskola, who wanted to establish a research centre for contemporary culture at the University of Jyväskylä to encourage sociological research on culture. To speed up the new unit, we decided to start together a multidisciplinary research project on the production and consumption of culture. My share at the Helsinki School of Economics was to take care of the ‘economic’ side of research, in other words, to lead the marketing and management oriented studies of cultural organizations as well as apply consumer theory to the study of cultural consumption (called ECOCULT-project). Katarina Eskola at the Research Centre for Contemporary Culture at the University of Jyväskylä, concentrated on the reception of cultural products, especially in the field of literature. The first years of the project were financed by the Academy of Finland, and the results were published in the series of both universities, the majority, however, in the new series of contemporary culture at Jyväskylä. At that time, edited university series were still considered a proper way to publish empirical research, especially since the cultural turn had not yet fully come true in social sciences, and there were only few publishing forums for interdisciplinary cultural research. 2 The present book is a continuation of that collaborated work, and it displays some interesting pieces of marketing and consumer studies of culture which have not been published elsewhere, with the exception of the papers published in the proceedings of AIMAC (International Association of Management of Arts & Culture) or ACE (Association for Cultural Economics). The collection also includes some papers which are closely connected with the later published dissertations of the authors in this research group (Jyrämä 1999; Taalas 1995; Linko 1998; Sorjonen 2005; Ahola 2007; Addis 2002). The authors perhaps feel somewhat uncomfortable to see their first, ‘explorative’ papers on the topic published after the dissertation. However, these short papers often take up the most relevant aspects of the topic in question. The majority of the research and papers in this book come from the last ten years, with a couple of exceptions from some years earlier. The articles cover empirical research of museums and other visual arts organizations and art consumers in Finland. The book is divided in four parts. The first part describes the changes in the social role of the museum and art field. The second part looks more closely at the art fields’ problems and alternative strategies from the management point of view. The third part studies how art and museum consumers see and experience the various forms of art supply and distribution channels. The fourth, final part goes into the questions of economic efficiency and performance and their measurement difficulties in museums and other art organizations. Although we deal with marketing and management problems of cultural organizations, our approach is more or less interdisciplinary, and references are made both to management and cultural studies. The data and method parts of the articles are very briefly described, and the main emphasis is given to interpreting the results. In this sense the articles differ from typical journal research articles. Since the research is mostly explorative, our results and conclusions remain tentative. However, hopefully they give ideas and encourage to further studies in the expanding field of cultural management and consumption studies. We also hope that this collection of interdisciplinary research work will inspire many new cooperative research efforts in the new Aalto University starting its activity in 2009. Aalto University is a composite of three well-known universities in the Helsinki area: Helsinki School of Economics, Helsinki University of Technology, and University of Art and Design. Interdisciplinary cross-fertilization between ideas from management, arts and technology 3 has been a leading motive behind this merger. The authors of this report have worked together in a very similar spirit. We gratefully acknowledge the financial support for this book by the Jenny and Antti Wihuri foundation and the Helsinki School of Economics Foundation. Warm thanks go also to Kirsti Biese, Kevin Kaime, and Heli Vänskä at the Department of marketing and management for their patient and skilful help during the several rounds of editing and re- editing the texts. References Addis, Michela (2002). ‘Nuove technologie e consume di prodotti artistici e culturali: verso lédutainment’. Micro & Macro Marketing 9 (1), 33-59. Ahola, Eeva-Katri (2007). Producing experience in marketplace encounters: A study of consumption experiences in art exhibitions and trade fairs. Helsinki School of Economics A-299. Jyrämä, Annukka (1999). Contemporary art markets: Structure and practices. A study of art galleries in Finland, Sweden, France, and Great Britain. Helsinki School of Economics A-160. Linko, Maaria (1998). Aitojen elämysten kaipuu: yleisön kuvataiteelle, kirjallisuudelle ja museoille antamat merkitykset. Jyväskylä: University of Jyväskylä. Sorjonen, Hilppa (2004). Taideorganisaation markkinointiorientaatio: markkinointiorientaation edellytykset ja ilmeneminen esitystaideorganisaation ohjelmistosuunnittelussa. Helsinki School of Economics A-247. Taalas, Mervi (1995). Three approaches to economic behaviour of Finnish museums: studies of economics of cultural institutions. Jyväskylä: University of Jyväskylä. 4 5 I THE CHANGING ROLE OF ART MUSEUMS 6 7 1 THE ROLES OF ART MUSEUMS – CHALLENGES TO THEIR MARKETING Liisa Uusitalo Introduction This chapter examines some basic conflicts in the activity of art museums and the ways these are dealt with by the museums. The discussion is based on previous research and on interviews with the managers of six European museums of modern and contemporary art. The museum sector is very much a field of activity typical of Western culture. Although the word "mouseion" (a holy place for muses) goes back to antiquity, museums in the modern sense were originally a product of the Renaissance, during which period an interest grew in humanly produced artifacts and the scientific systematization and classification of artworks (e.g. the Medici collections in Florence). However, it was only after the French revolution that private collections, previously owned only by the aristocracy, were opened to the public. Several public museums sprang up in nineteenth century Europe; the Louvre