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A new form of “museum” has emerged which takes advantage of the Internet′s seemingly limitless format options for electronic presentation and ability to tailor in‐depth presentations to niche audiences. Constraints of ownership and geographic location are lessened as Internet‐based museums point to sources across the globe. Collections which are physically impossible to construct are being mounted electronically. Offers a sampler of museums and galleries around the world which are making use of WorldWide Web or Gopher servers.

This paper aims to identify the key quality attributes a museum or art gallery should possess and enhance to become an attractive business event venue.

The research adopted a two-stage case-study methodology. Firstly, three museums were selected in Manchester, UK, to explore the venues’ approaches to hosting business events. These were the Lowry Art Centre, Salford Museum and Manchester Art Gallery. Secondly, a business event at another museum in the city, Science and Industry Museum, was accessed to explore the audiences’ perceptions and industry requirements regarding the organisation of events in museums. In total, 21 qualitative semi-structured and structured interviews were conducted with the event delegates, event planners and museums’ management.

Thematic analysis was applied to identify three key attributes: venue character, memorability and functionality and feasibility. Venue character refers to the overall appeal of a venue, including its history, status and interior design. Memorability refers to the authenticity and uniqueness of the attendee experience at a corporate event organised in a museum. Finally, functionality and feasibility deals with the availability of functional facilities, space flexibility and diverse venue regulations.

The findings of the research provide valuable insights to both museums and event companies. The research reveals the main benefits and drawbacks of using a museum or an art gallery as a venue for business events and suggests key aspects to consider while staging a business event in a cultural institution. Museums could apply the findings in marketing to emphasise their uniqueness, authenticity and flexibility.

This paper is a contribution to the literature on the branding of cultural institutions. In particular it focuses on visitor motivation in the field of museums and galleries. Measurement of visitor motivations and associated brand strength of cultural institutions is a relatively new concern for marketers. The need to develop further understanding of how best to market museums in the twenty‐first century motivates this research. Repertory grid analysis was used as the survey method in order to get data that were “rich” in terms of concepts, but also malleable in terms of statistical analysis. The results of an exploratory study of museum brand associations are reported, along with a discussion of the method of repertory grid analysis that was used to obtain the data. A total of 11 museums in London were targeted, with a special focus on the Tate Gallery.

Recent advancements in wearable computing offer opportunities for art galleries to provide a unique experience. However, to ensure successful implementation of this new technology in the visitor industry, it is essential to understand user requirements from a visitor’s point of view. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to investigate visitors’ requirements for the development of a wearable smart glasses augmented reality (AR) application in the museum and art gallery context.

Interviews with 28 art gallery visitors were conducted and an affinity diagram technique was used to analyze the interviews.

The findings reveal that wearable AR is in its infancy and that technical and design issues have to be overcome for a full adoption. It reveals that content requirement, functional requirement, comfort, experience and resistance are important when developing and implementing the wearable AR application in the museum and art gallery contexts.

Mapping user requirements in the wearable smart glasses AR context using an affinity diagram is a new approach and therefore contributes to the creation of knowledge in the tourism domain. Practically, the area of wearable technologies and AR within the tourism and visitor industry context is still relatively unexplored, and the present paper provides a first foundation for the implementation of wearable smart glasses AR applications in the museum and art gallery context.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the adoption of major exhibitions, often called blockbusters, as a sub-branding strategy for art museums. Focusing the experience around one location but drawing on a wide data set for comparative purposes, the authors examine the blockbuster phenomenon as exhibition packages sourced from international institutions, based on an artist or collection of quality and significance. The authors answer the questions: what drives an art museum to adopt an exhibition sub-brand strategy that sees exhibitions become blockbusters? What are the characteristics of the blockbuster sub-brand?

Using extant literature, interviews and content analysis in a comparative case study format, this paper has three aims: first, to embed exhibitions within the marketing and branding literature; second, to identify the drivers of a blockbuster strategy; and third, to explore the key characteristics of blockbuster exhibitions.

The authors present a theoretical model of major exhibitions as a sub-brand. The drivers identified include the entrepreneurial characteristics of pro-activeness, innovation and risk-taking, while the four key characteristics of the blockbuster are celebrity; spectacle; inclusivity; and authenticity.

These exhibitions are used to augment a host art museum’s own collection for its stakeholders and differentiate it in the wider cultural marketplace. While art museum curators seek to develop quality exhibitions, sometimes they become blockbusters. While blockbusters are a household word, the terms is contested and the authors know little about them from a marketing perspective.

Art museums are non-profit, social organisations that serve the community. Art museums therefore meet the needs of multiple stakeholders in a political environment with competing interests. The study draws on the experiences of a major regional art museum, examining the characteristics of exhibition sub-brands and the paradox of the sub-brand being used to differentiate the art museum. This paper fills a gap in both the arts marketing and broader marketing literature.

The use of the identified characteristics develops theory where the literature has been silent on the blockbuster sub-brand from a marketing perspective. It provides an exemplar for institutional learning on how to initiate and manage quality by popular exhibition strategies.

In recent years, OpenGLAM and the broader open license movement have been gaining momentum in the cultural heritage sector. The purpose of this paper is to examine OpenGLAM from the perspective of end users, identifying barriers for commercial and non-commercial reuse of openly licensed art images.

Following a review of the literature, the authors scope out how end users can discover institutions participating in OpenGLAM, and use case studies to examine the process they must follow to find, obtain and reuse openly licensed images from three art museums.

Academic literature has so far focussed on examining the risks and benefits of participation from an institutional perspective, with little done to assess OpenGLAM from the end users’ standpoint. The authors reveal that end users have to overcome a series of barriers to find, obtain and reuse open images. The three main barriers relate to image quality, image tracking and the difficulty of distinguishing open images from those that are bound by copyright.

This study focusses solely on the examination of art museums and galleries. Libraries, archives and also other types of OpenGLAM museums (e.g. archaeological) stretch beyond the scope of this paper.

The authors identify practical barriers of commercial and non-commercial reuse of open images, outlining areas of improvement for participant institutions.

The authors contribute to the understudied field of research examining OpenGLAM from the end users’ perspective, outlining recommendations for end users, as well as for museums and galleries.

As part of the Museum & Galleries Commission Registration process, museums set out detailed plans to show how well they currently document their collections, and how well they plan to do so in the future. For Wolverhampton Art Gallery, like many other museums, that plan included a computerised collection management system. At the end of May 1998, Wolverhampton Art Gallery purchased Adlib Information System's museum system ADMUSE. Two months later, successfully through Registration phase II, the cataloguing is in hand and we are dreaming about potential future projects involving the system.

While the body of work exploring brand orientation has grown, there has been a general failure to build on extant research and generate a holistic conceptualization of brand orientation. This paper aims to develop a model of the key drivers, impediments and manifestations of brand orientation in a museum context.

A collective case study design was used, consisting of key informant interviews using a semi‐structured interview protocol and analysis of institutional documents and observational research. Interviews took place with well‐known museums across three countries: the UK, the USA and Australia. This paper demonstrates the richness of qualitative case studies as a method of theory building and as a precursor to further empirical research.

The case study findings reveal both a philosophical and behavioral aspect of brand orientation. Thus, six attributes are presented that include brand orientation as an organizational culture and compass for decision‐making and four brand behaviors (distinctiveness, functionality, augmentation and symbolism). The conceptual model also depicts the critical antecedents to brand orientation in a museum context.

This study provides a foundation for future brand research by offering a holistic conceptualization of brand orientation and identifying the primary antecedents in a museum context. Future research may wish to empirically establish a valid and reliable scale of brand orientation and examine its explanatory potential. Future research may also consider other contexts to provide further insight into the drivers and inhibitors of brand orientation.

If organizations seek to establish a strong brand orientation they must devote resources to establishing the brand as a dominant organizational philosophy that guides decision‐making. In addition, brand‐oriented organizations must establish the brand as a distinctive asset that communicates relevance and accessibility and invest in augmenting initiatives that enable the organization to connect with customers on a personal and emotional level.

Using an exploratory method the authors are able to reconcile a number of approaches to brand orientation and provide a conceptualization that incorporates the philosophical and behavioral approaches to business orientations. Museums face substantial resource constraints, competing needs of multiple stakeholders and increasing market turbulence. If museums can achieve such significant organizational change then the sector presents an interesting exemplar for many other non‐profit organizations.

So far, most studies in cultural tourism have looked at visitors in relation to the experience itself. This study aims to bring a broader view on what constitutes the daily environment of younger visitors and how museums could use this knowledge to develop a service delivery that is more adapted to their needs without sacrificing the museums’ integrity and authenticity. As such, this research brings a unique and deeper analysis of young visitor behavior, in relation to arts and cultural practices that could be expanded to other areas of tourism experiences.

The present study examines the main art and cultural tourism activities among adolescents. Using 32 in-depth interviews with adolescents between 13 and 18 years of age, this research takes a closer look at their experience and perceptions of art museums and exhibitions.

The findings show that adolescents’ perception of arts and exhibitions do not correspond to museum art criteria held by cultural tourism professionals. Based on the key theoretical themes emerging from the empirical investigation, a conceptual framework of adolescents’ attitudes toward arts and exhibitions is now presented to provide insights into the dimensions of adolescents’ art consumption in today’s western consumer society. Figure 1 provides a graphic model that visualizes adolescents’ art consumption experiences and summarizes the main findings and marketing implications in the arts field.

Based on these findings, new ways of engaging with adolescents in the field of arts are suggested to create new business opportunities for the museum. The findings lean toward the necessity to develop a more youth-centric approach, which differentiates between how adults define art and what adolescents believe art is supposed to be. Thus, the findings demonstrate that adolescents’ art consumption experiences are deeply anchored within the context of their social environment and the value judgments of their peers. The adolescent-centric logic within the arts experiential context is taken into account to underline the gap existing in many current arts marketing strategies that are targeting young visitors – and especially adolescents.