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Against the changing perceptions of the nature of the customer experience in museums, this article seeks to explore aspects of the total customer experience in museums, initially through two simple case studies, and subsequently by identifying some of the factors that might influence the customer experience. A methodology using walk‐through audits is proposed for monitoring the total customer experience. This methodology has the following stages: building a typical customer profile, designing walk through audit frames, executing audit frames, analysing the data from frames, introducing any recommended changes to the strategic plan, and modifying frames to reflect changes. This methodology offers an important approach to the evaluation of the total customer experience, which encompasses consideration of the way in which the variety of individual service exchanges come together to provide an integrated experience.

The aim of this study is to evaluate the implicit and explicit attitudes of Generation Z (Gen Z) individuals toward the experience of visiting and getting to know traditional or virtual museums.

Two studies were conducted. The first study assesses the implicit attitudes of Gen Z individuals through Implicit Association Tests (IAT) toward the experience of visiting traditional versus virtual museums. Considering the results of the study one, the second study proposes and validates a conceptual model through PLS-SEM approach about the explicit attitudes of this generation toward virtual museums.

In the first study, it was found that virtual museums are more successful at engaging and immersing participants than traditional museums for Gen Z. The second study emphasized the significance of meeting Gen Z expectations and ensuring effortless access to information in virtual experiences as this can lead to increased satisfaction and inspiration among this generation.

The originality of this study lies in its focus on Gen Z's attitudes toward virtual museums and the use of both implicit and explicit attitude measures to gain a comprehensive understanding of these attitudes. An interesting aspect emerges from the implicit attitudes displayed by Gen Z, indicating their preference for virtual museums as more captivating compared to traditional ones.

Previous research has been unable to provide a comprehensive method for measuring environment-based experience and its outcomes although it is an essential determinant of the museum experience. Therefore, this paper aims to present a measurement method for exploring how visitors’ servicescape experiences affect their positive word-of-mouth intention (PWOM).

Data were collected by surveying 810 visitors to 3 museums (i.e. Louvre, Pera and Key) representing different museum types. The research model was validated by using partial least squares structural equation modeling.

The predicted associations between sensory, spatial and social experiences, and PWOM were confirmed for Pera. In the Louvre and Key, however, only sensory and social experiences were positively associated with PWOM. In addition, the moderating effect of building type on the relationship between spatial experience and PWOM was demonstrated.

This paper contributes to the servicescape, customer experience and museum literature in several ways. Firstly, this study proposes a measurement method for servicescape experiences. Secondly, this study introduces servicescape experiences as new types of customer experience. Thirdly, this study provides insightful implications for the museum literature and professionals by highlighting how servicescape experiences affect PWOM across different types of museums.

This study aims to determine museum experiences by analyzing the TripAdvisor reviews of the museum visitors in Gaziantep and offer suggestions for improving the visitors' experiences by taking museum curators' opinions.

The case study method was used as one of the qualitative approaches in the study. The research comprises two stages. TripAdvisor reviews about five museums in Gaziantep were analyzed in the first stage, and museum curators' opinions on the visitor complaint reasons and solution suggestions were discussed in the second stage.

The study showed that satisfying or non-satisfying experience factors might differ according to visitors, museum curators and both visitors and museum curators. Therefore, each museum curator should effectively manage every component of visitor experience factors by its target audience.

Although this study has some valuable findings and contributes to the literature, it also has limitations. The study's sample consists of five museums in Gaziantep. Further studies can be carried out on a larger population and sample. The data for determining visitor experiences, the first stage of the research, were obtained only from an online platform (TripAdvisor).

The proposed model provides a holistic perspective on evaluating and managing visitor experience. There may be structural problems (small size of the museum area, lack of parking spaces and elevators, etc.) with the museum beyond the manager's control. Also, the lack of information and communication (limited concept, lack of artifacts, etc.) causes criticisms of the museum.

This paper contributes to the museum management literature with a model for enriching the quality of the museum experience and increasing the museum's attractiveness. The study showed that museums contribute to the visitor's experience in all dimensions. While visitors thought museums primarily contribute to object experience, museum curators thought museums contribute more to visitors' cognitive experience and other experience elements.

The present study analyzed the visitor comments and the opinions of museum curators from a holistic perspective, considering the internal and external factors that are effective in the visitor experience, and revealed the reasons for the visitors' negative experience and the solution suggestions toward the improvement of the visitor experience.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

By extending the expectancy-disconfirmation theory and integrating the elaboration likelihood model, this study aims to explore the reference effects (i.e. disconfirmation and self-identity) and customer engagement that affect customer experience on satisfaction with a museum visit. The study is designed to test a dual-mediator mechanism involving disconfirmation and self-identity. The moderating role of cognitive, affective or behavioral engagements is also examined with the overall purpose to advance the understanding of customer experience in cultural consumption such as museum visits.

A self-administered field survey in two stages was carried out on visitors to the Hong Kong Museum of Art. A total of 465 valid response sets were used for analysis. Hypotheses were tested using confirmatory factor analysis, three-step mediation test, structural equation modeling and moderation regressions.

Disconfirmation and self-identity are found to be dual mediators in the experience–satisfaction relationship. Cognitive engagement reduces the effect of knowledge experience on disconfirmation and self-identity but increases that of the entertainment experience on disconfirmation and self-identity. Affective engagement amplifies the effect of knowledge experience on self-identity but mitigates the importance of entertainment evaluations.

Findings highlight the importance of both perceived knowledge and entertainment experiences in visitors’ evaluation of a cultural experience. Managers are suggested to craft promotional messages with the psychological appeal that connects visitors with museum services. Appropriate engagement tactics for museums can be developed to avoid overloading visitors with information.

Previous studies treat disconfirmation as the dominant reference effect in the formation of customer satisfaction. This study shows both disconfirmation and self-identity as dual reference effects that link the customer experience to satisfaction in the museum context, serving as a pioneer in defining how the influence of experience on reference effects varies depending on how customers are cognitively and affectively engaged in such context.

This paper aims to analyse the quality of experience in the Italian art museum context and to understand the mediating role of satisfaction between museum experiences and visitors' word-of-mouth (WOM) behavioural intentions.

This exploratory study adopted a quantitative methodology. Visitors to Italian art museums were interviewed, and the results were examined using exploratory factor analysis and regression analysis.

The analysis shows that the following museum experience dimensions were present in the Italian art museum context: aesthetics, escapism and “edumotion”. Further, these dimensions positively affected visitors' overall satisfaction which mediates on WOM behavioural intentions.

The small sample limits the generalisability of findings, and further research on the topic is recommended.

Museums should allocate resources to improve visitor experience, visitor satisfaction and museum attractions. Specifically, museum managers should invest in the three dimensions that emerged from this study.

This study enriches the empirical evidence on experiential marketing in the museum context by focussing on the mediating role of overall satisfaction in the relationship between museum experience and WOM behaviours. To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first study investigating this phenomenon in Italian museums.

The purpose of this paper is to argue that social interaction fundamentally underpins how people examine, experience and make sense of museum exhibits. It seeks to reveal how people collaboratively view and make sense of artwork and other kinds of exhibit, and in particular how the ways of looking at and responding to exhibits arise in social interaction.

The analysis inspects in detail video‐recordings of visitors' conduct and interaction at exhibits. It draws on ethnomethodology and conversation analysis to reveal the social and sequential organisation of people's verbal, visual and bodily action and interaction.

The study finds that people explore museums and examine exhibits with companions while other visitors act and interact in the same locale. Which exhibits visitors look at and how they see and experience them is influenced by and arises in social interaction with others, be they companions or strangers. People display and share their experience of exhibits with others through verbal and bodily action and interaction.

The findings bear on current debates in marketing research. They suggest that there is a lack of understanding of people's experience of exhibits in museums. They show how video‐based studies can address this gap in marketing research. Further studies are currently being conducted to shed light on the quality of people's experience at the exhibit‐face and how it may be enhanced by the deployment of interpretation resources, such as labels, touch‐screen and handheld systems.

The findings may have some implications for the work of curators, designers and exhibition evaluators. They suggest that social interaction needs to be taken into consideration when designing and deploying exhibits and interpretation resources, such as labels, touch‐screen information kiosks, hand‐held computers, etc.

The paper uses visual/video‐recordings as principal data and illustrates its findings by virtue of visual material. It introduces video‐based field studies as a method to examine cultural and visual consumption in museums. It employs an analytic and methodological framework from ethnomethodology and conversation analysis that previously have found little application in marketing and consumer research.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the main factors contributing to museum experience and assess the differences in museum experience perceptions of domestic and foreign tourists. Furthermore, examining the relationship between museum visit experience and overall satisfaction for the domestic and foreign tourists is another purpose of the paper.

Data collection was conducted using the convenience sampling method. The on-site survey was carried out with the participation of domestic and foreign tourists visiting Antalya Historical and Archaeological Museum in Turkey.

Analysis of data from 151 domestic and 151 foreign tourists visiting to Antalya Historical and Archaeological Museum indicated that edutainment, comfort, escape and aesthetic are the underlying dimensions of museum experience. The aesthetic dimension was identified as the most important aspect of the museum visit experience. In addition, museum visit perceptions of the domestic and foreign tourists and overall satisfactions with their visit were found to be different from each other.

The findings of this study provide a better understanding of the museum experience from the domestic and foreign tourists’ perspectives. Furthermore, the paper presents a novel and integrated approach to investigate tourist experiences in the extending museum experience literature.

This paper aims to contribute to the area of museum experience research, by exploring how consumers build stories to tell different experiences generated from a visit to a museum and by viewing these inductive findings in the light of recent research on consumption experiences (Lanier and Rader, 2015).

A qualitative study is conducted. Twenty-three narratives were analysed relating a visit to ZKM museum in Karlsruhe (Germany) using narrative analysis techniques, as they are suitable to capture sensations, emotions and feelings.

ZKM museum emerges from the analysis of the narratives as a cradle for stochastic experiences (Lanier and Rader, 2015). The narratives develop several episodes that correspond to performance and liberatory experiences. A reconceptualization of the museal experience is proposed as a mesh of performance, stochastic or liberatory episodes, that capture the subject’s perspective.

The study was limited to students who were 19-23 years of age and to one museum. Future research should include a wider age group and other museums.

The findings provide useful insights for curators, educators and exhibit designers staging museal experiences.

The findings provide a better understanding of different experiences occurring in the same experiential context and their meaning from the subject’s perspective.

Lanier and Rader (2015) typology has not yet been tested in a museal context. The findings suggest that the same context can generate a set of various episodes (performance, liberatory, stochastic) within a given experience. From a methodological perspective, the results show that qualitative approaches are relevant to segment the museal offer based on sought experiences.