Overview

What museum does not want insight into what its visitors and potential visitors are looking for? Nearly every function within the museum benefits from a deeper understanding of visitors: curators, educators, fundraisers, marketers, store and cafe managers, guards, and volunteers. This book creatively instructs museums on how to study visitors to make their exhibits, programs, and shops more appealing for all segments of the public. Each chapter identifies an observed visitor behavior or attitude and details how it can significantly affect attendance, satisfaction, and loyalty. The author's approach explains how all museum personnel can participate in valuable observational research without breaking the bank on expensive studies.

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Reviews

Margot Wallace correctly argues that there is no substitute for immersing yourself in your institution's visitor experience. She offers a range of ways to do that, all of which involve 'walking around' your museum in your own shoes and a few other people's shoes. You will, no doubt, be surprised by what you find a lot more information than surveys, touch-screen polls, and interviews provide. This melding of observational research with more traditional quantitative and qualitative methods is already a major trend in retail research. Museum professionals cannot afford to fall behind this curve. The good news is you can put many of Wallace's ideas to work for you without hiring an expensive consultant or doubling the size of your research budget.--John G. Rodman

Margot Wallace correctly argues that there is no substitute for immersing yourself in your institution's visitor experience. She offers a range of ways to do that, all of which involve 'walking around' your museum in your own shoes and a few other people's shoes. You will, no doubt, be surprised by what you find--a lot more information than surveys, touch-screen polls, and interviews provide. This melding of observational research with more traditional quantitative and qualitative methods is already a major trend in retail research. Museum professionals cannot afford to fall behind this curve. The good news is you can put many of Wallace's ideas to work for you without hiring an expensive consultant or doubling the size of your research budget. -- John G. Rodman

Author Information

Margot A. Wallace is associate professor of marketing communication at Columbia College Chicago. She is the author of Museum Branding: How to Create and Maintain Image, Loyalty, and Support.

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