Generation Y: evaluating services experiences through mobile ethnography

Abstract

Purpose

This paper suggests mobile ethnography as a method for data collection, where Generation Y customers are integrated as active investigators. The paper aims to contribute to the debate on museums as experience‐centred places, to understanding how the experience is perceived by Generation Y, to identifying the customer journey, to providing an insight into service experience consumption and to deriving managerial implication for the museum industry of how to approach Generation Y.

Design/methodology/approach

Mobile ethnography is applied to the National Museum of Australia in Canberra with a sample of Generation Y visitors as the future visitor market.

Findings

The paper finds that there is a need to involve museum management in measuring museum experiences, especially with regard to the definition and improvement of the service‐delivery processes. Service experience must be appropriately managed by museum operators by collecting, evaluating, storing and reusing relevant data on customer experience. Mobile ethnography and tools such as MyServiceFellow offer an important potential source of sustainable competitive advantage by improving customer experience, particularly for Gen Y.

Research limitations/implications

The most significant limitation is the exploratory nature of the single case study derived from a small sample within only one museum.

Originality/value

This is one of the few studies to have addressed mobile ethnography in a service context and examined the museum experience of Generation Y. The paper finds that there is a need to involve museum management in service design to improve the service‐delivery process, especially with regard to the different mindsets of the Millennials.

Citation

Muskat, M., Muskat, B., Zehrer, A. and Johns, R. (2013), "Generation Y: evaluating services experiences through mobile ethnography", Tourism Review, Vol. 68 No. 3, pp. 55-71. https://doi.org/10.1108/TR-02-2013-0007