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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.

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.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how the emergent 3D interactive media technologies are used as a viable tool for enhancing visitors’ overall experiences at an exhibition entitled, 300 Years of Hakka Kungfu – Digital Vision of Its Legacy and Future (Hakka Kungfu Exhibition) – presented and co-organized by the Intangible Cultural Heritage Office of Hong Kong, International Guoshu Association and the School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong.

A questionnaire survey in both online and paper-based formats was used for identifying visitors’ experiences in the interactions with the multimedia technologies. For this research study, a questionnaire, consisting of 26 items, was set out to measure the visitors’ experiences at the Exhibition. Since the Exhibition was about presenting a centuries-old Chinese cultural heritage, Hakka Kungfu via the use multimedia technologies, in the context of establishing a dialogue between the past and present, the researchers included questionnaire items that were devoted to enquire about the level of understanding, knowledge and enjoyment, and visitors’ new knowledge about Hong Kong history and culture was successfully disseminated to the respondents at the end of the questionnaire.

A total of 209 completed questionnaires were collected at this Hakka Kungfu Exhibition. The findings reveal that the exhibits did attract people at all ages. This Exhibition gave the visitors a sense of interest and wonder in the object and information presented in the Exhibition. Findings of this study also reveal that this Exhibition has successfully attracted a large number of female visitors, as well as visitors who have never taken any martial arts training. In addition, visitors’ Exhibition experience was found to be memorable, as well as enjoyable. Furthermore, visitors’ experience within the Exhibition suggested that it was entertaining, as well as educational. By creating a long-lasting impact on the minds of these Exhibition visitors about the connections between and relevance of traditional Chinese Kungfu, their collective cultural identity, as well as the contemporary society we live in. The Exhibition exemplified the successful integration of the presentation of Kungfu as a form of cultural heritage with engagement-creating technology, in which technology is unobtrusive but effective.

Although it is already a global trend for the museums to integrate multimedia technologies into their exhibitions, research on the situation and feedback of multimedia technology used in the museum exhibitions in Hong Kong is scarce as well as scattered. Findings of this study could help identify various factors involved in audience participation, thereby exploring the possibility of building a contact point/space for traditional Chinese Kungfu as an intangible cultural heritage, via the integration of the latest media technologies. In particular, the development of multimedia technologies has become increasingly important to museums, and museum professionals have been exploring how digital and communication technologies can be developed to offer visitors a more interactive, personalized museum experience. In general, despite the growing interest in deploying digital technology as interpretation devices in museums and galleries, there are relatively few studies that examine how visitors, both alone and with others, use new technologies when exploring the museum contents.

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.

In recent years museums have changed from being predominantly custodial institutions to becoming increasingly focussed on audience attraction. New emphasis is placed on museum‐audience interactions and relationships. This change in the purpose and priorities of museums has impacted upon the nature of museum management. The recognition of new roles for museum directors and the need to appeal to differentiated audiences has created new challenges for previously traditional, custodial directors. This paper presents a conceptual framework for managing museums, taking account of the museum service context and the delivery of the museum service product. It then examines two museums, one in Ireland and one in Australia, both of which have a similar cultural history. The paper considers the different management styles for museum directors and how these different styles illustrate the changes in professional perspective from the traditional (a focus on custodial preservation) to the more current (a focus on educating and entertaining the public).

The purpose of this study is to investigate through an empirical research the factors that would attract visitors to heritage and cultural sites as museums applied on the Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM). The paper aims to study the impact of the proposed attraction features learning/knowledge, museum facilities, fun/entertainment and socializing and accessibility/location on pre-visit destination image.

The author started by a thorough literature review to arrive to the suggested conceptual model, which is tested by adopting a quantitative approach where data were collected using a self-administered questionnaire from a convenient sample of 300 respondents with 90% response rate and used partial least squares – structure equation modelling using Smart PLS v.3.2.8.

The results show that three of the tested factors were accepted and one was rejected.

Management of GEM, which will be one of the biggest museums world-wide, can make use of the empirical results of this research to enhance their understanding of the factors that impact pre-visit destination image, and thus, most attract visitors to justify the budget set in this huge project and achieve highest visitation and revenue

This research deals with a new museum that has not opened its doors yet and will start functioning in late 2020, and thus, the pre-visit image of the museum is not based on previous experience of visitors but rather on secondary sources as messages sent to visitors based on attraction features, while most previous studies dealt with post-visit image of museums

Since the advent of the contract culture, the reduction in museum budgets, and the implementation of performance measures based on customer satisfaction management, museums have faced increasing pressure to attract wider audiences. This requires an understanding of visitor expectations, and experiences, of visiting a museum. However, for the most part, public museums have concentrated their research efforts into obtaining statistical data which measure through‐put and provide demographic profiles, ignoring in the process the nature of the experience itself. This paper looks at research derived primarily from academics working in the field of visitor studies. It outlines three approaches; the social, the cognitive, and the environmental perspective, which have been applied to studies of museum visitor behaviour. The paper then presents the findings from an observational study of visitors to a city museum. These findings are recast in the light of the three approaches described, in order to offer an integrated framework of customer behaviour which has implications for the management of the service encounter in museums.

This paper aims to better understand museums’ image. The study examined the influence of visitors’ socio-demographic (gender, social class), tripographic (party group, previous experience with the museum and timing of the decision to visit the museum) and geographic characteristics (national – international visitors), on the different components and dimensions of perceived museums’ image (cognitive and affective) in a major tourism destination.

This research focussed on museums located on Gran Canaria (Canary Islands, Spain). The population of the study included museum attendees who visited the main museums of the island (13 museums). The selection of respondents (252) was made following a systematic random sampling at the exit gate of the museums.

The repeat visitors and those who plan the visit in advance were found to have a more positive museums’ image for both the cognitive and the affective components of museum image. There was also a positive influence of party group on the cognitive and affective dimensions of image, whereas families showed a less positive image. In addition, there were significant relationships between the visitors’ socio-demographic characteristics of gender, and social class, and the affective and cognitive components of image – women and higher classes achieving a better image. National visitors also showed a more positive image on both the cognitive and affective components of museum image. Six image dimensions were found and specific effects on each are discussed.

This study adds to the growing literature on museums for a better understanding of the perceived image of this cultural product (museums) at the destination, and how it can be managed according to the profile of their publics. Additionally, it considers the different dimensions of museums’ image: quality of visitation experience, convenience and functionality, price, general appearance, museum shop and affective image.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a new management approach to analyse the processes of museums in the experience logic and, on the basis of such a model, to study the management processes of the National Gallery of the Marches in Urbino, one of the most important museums in Italy.

This study adopted a qualitative methodology and a descriptive-exploratory approach. The proposed model, which aimed to create and manage experiences and transformations in museums, was tested in the National Gallery of the Marches by adopting the case study method.

The empirical research underlined the partial application of the proposed model in the museum under examination and the potential for the museum to improve the offering value to its visitors.

Although a single case was investigated, the present work offers a preliminary theoretical contribution, which is useful for perfecting the conceptual framework and applying it to a wider number of cases.

The management of the National Gallery of the Marches should first plan a greater number of more detailed experiences and transformations around the theme of the Renaissance, and promote the active role of visitors. Second, it should improve the communication of the offer, especially through social networks. Third, personnel (especially front office) should be motivated and trained to create value for visitors.

The paper aims at developing a new management approach for the museums to create value for the visitors and museums by bringing the insight of the experience logic into the field of cultural heritage management.

This purpose of this paper is to discuss how experiential design can provide a basis for museums’ branding strategies in order to attract visitors, particularly those visitors with a low involvement with museums.

The authors first analyze the experiential motives that museums should consider as relevant in attracting potential visitors. Consequently, the authors examine effects of experiential design on the participants’ behavior and attitudes, which are relevant for achieving branding objectives and institutional objectives of museums. In an experiment, using computer simulations, the authors tested the effects of an experiential vsus a non-experiential museum design on potential, especially low-involved participants.

The results of the experiment show a positive impact of the multidimensional experiential design on low-involved participants concerning branding relevant behavior, such as loyalty and perceived differentiation. There is also a positive influence on institutional goals such as perceiving the museum as role model and a positive change of attitude toward museums in general.

Because of the virtual character of the examined museum the results show only a tendency for potential behavior of real museum visitors. Future studies should test the effects of experience design for a real museum with a distinct brand profile.

The study reveals that once in a museum, potential visitors with a low involvement can be addressed by a museum design that appeals to their experiential motives and which, at the same time, communicates a differentiated brand profile of the museum. Following the visit, this impression can help to overcome barriers in terms of further museum visits and stimulate positive word-of-mouth advertising to other potential visitors.

The results suggest that from a global perspective, experience inducing museums can become role models for other museums, thus altering the image, expectations, and attitude of potential visitors with low-involvement toward museums as social institutions.

For the first time the explicit effects of a strategic experiential museum design on potential visitors are analyzed in terms of relevant branding and institutional objectives of museums.