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4 Product
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Product is arguably the most important element of the four ‘Ps’ of product, price, promotion and place
which constitute the marketing mix. A product can be either a service (like a ride in a taxi) or a physical
good (like the taxi itself). It is essentially a bundle of customer benefits offered for sale. It can consist of
tangible or intangible elements, or – more commonly – a combination of both. Some writers prefer to use
the term ‘product’ to denote physical goods as opposed to services, but in this chapter we will use it as an
inclusive term covering both.
Product provides the basic building block of any marketing strategy, and has a central role in arts
marketing because of the innovative and creative nature of artistic inspiration. But what concerns the arts
marketer is not so much what is produced by artists as what is available to audiences as experience. This
chapter will address the nature of the experience of art from a customer perspective, exploring how
marketing can optimize and enhance outcomes for customers and arts organizations. We will discuss:
The nature of goods and services

Service-dominant logic
Levels of product
Product decisions
Service quality
Goods and services

Marketing theory and practice has been built largely on the experience of companies selling packaged
goods in the 1950s and beyond. But arts organizations (along with other service-providing organizations
such as banks, doctors and hairdressers) create benefits for customers by selling services rather than
physical goods. Services have characteristics which physical goods lack, and which affect how they are
marketed. Four widely recognized ones are:
Intangibility
Inseparability of production and consumption
Heterogeneity
Perishability
Intangibility
Copyright 2017. Routledge.
Unlike physical goods, which can be handled and stored, services are intangible. They are experiences
rather than objects. Potential consumers cannot inspect a night out at the theatre before purchase in the
same way as they might, for example, test-drive a car.
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96 Product
The perceived risk of an intangible purchase is thus much higher than that for buying a physical good
(which can always be returned or modified). Arts marketers need to reassure the potential customer with
credible and reliable information in advance of purchase. Intangibility contributes to the difficulty of
setting and justifying prices for services – which are more difficult to compare on a like-for-like basis than
physical goods. As we shall see, the element of place (or distribution) is also complicated by intangibility
because customers need to be directly involved when a service is delivered.
However, intangibility also creates opportunities for arts marketers. Retailing potential exists for
enhancing the experience of the arts with ancillary products. Such products are valuable because of their
relationship to the main offering. Examples include theatre and concert programmes, posters, recordings,
books and memorabilia. A benchmarking study carried out by a group of large theatres in the UK shows
that, in 2013–2014, the profit from such items, combined with that from other ancillary sales such
as catering, confectionery and ice-cream, was worth more than 6 per cent of the value of ticket sales
(Hazell, 2017).
Inseparability of production and consumption

Whereas products tend to be used some time after they have been made, services are consumed and
produced at one and the same time. This is clearly the case in the live performing arts. But even in a
gallery or museum, the experience of the artworks or objects takes place in a particular time and space,
and usually has important social aspects involving friends or family. We leave the gallery enriched, but by
an experience rather than by a physical possession.
The arts customer is an active participant rather than passive consumer. Often, what makes attending a
performance or visiting a gallery special is being part of group of people experiencing something as it
happens. This even true of cinema, where a distinctive characteristic of the experience of watching a film,
or a live relay of a performance, is sharing it with others in the auditorium.
Heterogeneity
No two performances are ever the same. Even art objects which do not involve performance are valued
for the variety and depth of experience to which they can give rise in the beholder on different occasions.
The experience of a piece of music will vary according to the interpretation offered by different musicians
and the mood of the listener. This makes like-with-like comparisons practically impossible (although
such comparisons are, paradoxically, an important part of the experience for many audience members
when it comes to frequently performed pieces). The uniqueness and singularity of the artistic experience
is a major selling point for arts marketers.
There are often a number of people involved in the delivery of a service. In the arts this extends beyond
people like performers to cover each member of customer-facing staff. All contribute in some way to the
uniqueness of the experience. Arts marketing departments are well positioned to take the lead in fostering
a whole-organization approach to satisfying customer needs (as discussed in Chapter 10). This covers
everyone who deals directly, or even indirectly, with the public. Service marketing experience suggests
the wisdom of empowering customer-facing staff to take decisions and sort out problems in meeting
customer requirements (DeRose & Tichy, 2013).
Perishability
Like the issue of intangibility, perishability is a fundamental difference between goods (which can be
stored) and services (which need immediate consumption). Unsold tickets for a particular date are lost
forever as income opportunities, even though the organization will have borne the full cost of staging the
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Product 97
event. Synchronizing supply and demand in a business where what is produced cannot be stored is a
perennial dilemma for marketers in any service industry.
This presents itself acutely to arts marketers where the size of the audience for an event needs to
achieve a critical mass to create sufficient atmosphere, but (as in the case of a popular exhibition) must not
be allowed to exceed the available supply. Much service marketing effort is devoted to trying to cope with
fluctuating demand. It underlies differential ticket pricing, where weeknight attendance is encouraged by
lower pricing than at weekends in most theatres. But it also affects product planning decisions. Many
theatres vary their programmes with other sorts of activity or go dark (i.e. take a break from presenting
work) during the summer months in recognition of the fact that this is a time of the year when many
members of their regular audience may be away on holiday. There are, of course, exceptions to this rule.
In certain locations popular with tourists the pattern is reversed, with peak attendance months driven by
visitors. Organizational responses include programming work to suit the seasonal audience and
implementing production and performance staff employment policies which reflect adjustments between
demand and capacity across a year.
A model of service delivery

Hoffman and Bateson (2011) propose the Servuction model as a framework to help think through how
services such as a theatrical performance are produced – seeing the process as a collaboration between the
customer and four other factors:
The servicescape (in other words the environment in which the service is produced)
The contact personnel and/or service providers
The invisible organization and the systems embedded in it which support the service
Other customers
Hoffman and Bateson make a distinction between ‘visible’ and ‘invisible’ elements. In a theatre, the
invisible organization might include backstage operations or the box office staffing rota. These sys-
tems are concealed from the customer, and parts of them will probably be concealed from staff not
immediately involved in them. They support the visible elements like the unseen mass of an iceberg
supporting its visible tip. The visible elements comprise the physical environment in which the service
takes place (for example a theatre’s front of house facilities, auditorium and stage sets) and the people
involved. This could include the box office worker who confirms the booking, the actor on stage or the
person selling coffee at the interval. As can be seen from Figure 4.1, the model also includes other
customers, accurately reflecting how other members of the audience contribute to the experience.
In fact, research on audience experience suggests these include both seen and unseen, or imagined,
members, because of the memories and expectations audiences bring to performances (O’Sullivan,
2009).
The Servuction model highlights a number of practical implications:
Customer involvement: because of the involvement of the customer in the production of the
service, any changes in how it is produced or mediated will necessitate a change in consumer
behaviour. This underlines the importance of treating customers as collaborators and creating
ways of involving them.
Lack of privacy: a new production line in a factory can break down without the consumer knowing
about it. But a new departure for an arts organization sinks or swims in the full glare of publicity.
With services, mistakes happen at the point of production, and the arts organization has to have
systems which can minimize potential disruption.
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Other customers Servicescape (visible)

Fellow audience members Sightlines
(present and imagined) Architecture
Furniture and decor
Physical environment
Theatregoer
Invisible organization
and systems Contact personnel/
Box office systems
service providers
Rehearsal/production process Front of house staff
Artistic policy Performers
Personnel and marketing
Figure 4.1 The Servuction system model as applied to a theatre performance (adapted from Hoffman &
Bateson, 2011).
Learning the script: customers tend to approach a service experience with a set of expectations,
which can be thought of as a script (Hoffman & Bateson, 2011). For example, we all know more or
less what is going to happen when we visit the dentist and we behave accordingly. This internalized
customer script is related to externalized roles, where we expect certain types of performance from
other people. This needs everyone involved in customer contact to be competent and comfortable in
their roles.
The growing importance of marketing: Servuction recognizes the importance of marketing in a
competitive environment. Arts customers arrive with expectations nourished by their experience
elsewhere. The marketing function needs to be able to interpret these changing expectations to the
organization as a whole, providing its link to the customer.
Service-dominant logic
Services have grown in importance in many economies, including the services provided by the cultural
and creative industries (Lhermitte et al., 2015). This growth has prompted a stream of research in aca-
demic marketing circles questioning whether the ‘goods-dominant’ logic of traditional marketing theory
founded on experience with physical goods is still relevant in the 21st century. As we have seen with the
Servuction model, services marketing theory adapts very usefully to the arts, and Servuction provides a
valuable tool for analysing, and improving, elements of customer experience. But some marketing
theorists question whether we should really be making any distinction between goods and services at all,
arguing that “customers do not buy goods or services: they buy offerings which render services which
create value” (Gummesson, 1995). This an exciting idea for arts marketers as it corresponds to the way
the arts address customers as active participants rather than passive receivers of pre-packaged benefits.
The American researchers Vargo and Lusch (2004) have led the argument that the growth of the service
economy requires a new way of thinking about what goes on in marketing. They call their approach
“service-dominant logic”. This emphasizes that physical goods are really only appliances – tools for the
rendition of services – rather than ends in themselves. It casts the customer in the role of what Vargo and
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Box 4.1 What’s going on in your gallery?

Video and audio recording (with consent) reveals what visitors actually do when looking at pictures
and other museum exhibits:
How much attention a particular exhibit gets depends on other people’s signals as much as, if
not more than, on the object itself. Yet exhibition design often assumes pieces are visited in a
given order.
Visitors spend a lot of time talking to one another about what they are looking at. Yet
information is often presented on panels close to the work on display, at a certain size and
height, as if aimed at individuals. Technology, such as the San Francisco Museum of Modern
Art’s free app, enables visitors to sync the commentary they receive on artworks as they visit, in
a way better adapted to social interaction.
How people react to touchscreens and other involvement devices provides evidence for
gamification and the use of interactive exhibits as ways of enhancing learning and aesthetic/
social benefits.
Sources: adapted from Chun, 2016; vom Lehn & Heath, 2016.
Lusch call an “operant resource” – in other words an actively operating collaborator in the creation of
value. Vargo and Lusch contrast this notion of operant customer with the one it replaces – what they term
an “operand resource” – something which is acted upon, or operated upon, by the marketer through the
right combination of the four Ps, but which is essentially passive in the process leading to benefits.
In fact the roles of the four Ps of the familiar marketing mix are reframed in the service-dominant
perspective. Products become ‘service flows’, occasions for experiences rather than objects in them-
selves; promotion becomes a dialogue with the customer as partner; price is reframed as how each
party to the deal sees value; and place is reconceived in terms of networks and processes involving
customers, rather than simply getting something from A to B in the most efficient and effective way
(Lusch & Vargo, 2006).
Service-dominant logic stresses the role of the customer in co-production and co-creation. While
linked, these two terms mean different things. Co-production is “participation in the creation of the core
offering itself” (Lusch & Vargo, 2006). Examples from commercial marketing might include self-service
in banks and supermarkets, online check-in for flights or assembling flat-pack furniture. In the arts it
would range from active participation in audience feedback sessions for work in progress, to taken-
for-granted behaviour at performances (such as paying attention and not distracting other audience
members).
The related concept of co-creation relates to the value perceived (and thus created for themselves) by
customers through usage, consumption or experience. The concept of co-production is nested within that
of co-creation. Customers are always involved in co-creation (assuming, of course, that they do derive
some benefit and value from an experience), but not always involved in co-production. For example a
passenger will still create (or derive) value from being checked-in on a flight, whether they do it
themselves online or are checked-in manually at an airport desk. Because of the imaginative collabor-
ation implied in arts experience, arts customers tend to be involved in both co-production and
co-creation.
What lessons can arts marketers take from this way of understanding what is going on in a product
encounter? Lusch et al. (2007) list six factors which they argue can encourage customers to be more
100 Product
actively involved in co-production, and lead to more satisfying and sustainable outcomes. Here they are
applied to arts marketing:
1 Expertise: the more confident and knowledgeable customers are, the more likely their active
engagement in co-production. Initiatives such as study days, podcasts, apps or other resources to
enhance customer knowledge and understanding of the artistic product can support expertise.
2 Control: this is more in the nature of a pre-existing customer motivation than something a marketer
can create. The more stake customers have in the outcome of a marketing exchange, the more control
they will have over their role in co-production. A theatre targeting young people with a play they are
studying would be a way of leveraging control as a factor in co-production. As a well-informed and
motivated audience they would be more active participants in the performance and any ancillary
activities such as a post-show discussion.
3 Physical capital: again this is likely to be a pre-existing customer characteristic, to be addressed by
segmentation strategy. It relates to possession of equipment (and is connected with expertise).
People with walking boots are more likely to be hikers (and thus active customers for outdoor
products) than those less well-shod. An arts-related analogy would be the Picture Library at
Leeds Art Gallery which allows members to borrow original works of art and live with them in
their homes for periods of a year (Leeds Art Gallery, 2013). Having works of art at home is likely
to make one a more active co-producer of visual arts experience in other contexts. Similarly,
people who play musical instruments are an important segment for concert promoters
(O’Sullivan, 2009).
4 Risk taking: co-production places the customer at risk of failure to produce something successfully.
It’s not just the manufacturer’s fault if the cake you make from a packet comes out burnt. Marketing
should aim at supporting the customer’s confidence in their ability to collaborate successfully,
perhaps by keying the artistic experience into a more familiar context (such as a social or celebratory
opportunity).
5 Psychological benefits: co-production can be extremely enjoyable and fulfilling. We are learning
more about the contribution arts activity makes to skills, confidence, health and wellbeing
(Carnwath & Brown, 2014; Bazalgette, 2017). This provides valuable cues for marketing messages
aimed at increased customer involvement.
6 Economic benefits: early examples of co-production (e.g. self-assembly furniture) were motivated
by cost savings for the seller passed on through lower prices, as customers took on roles previously
fulfilled by providers. Ironically, creating such opportunities for arts customers may well increase
costs (e.g. running extra activities such as post-show discussions, or developing tools to facilitate
engagement in museums and galleries). The extra value created with customers may compensate for
this by leading to more sales and other income.
Of course co-production is only relevant if it leads to the co-creation of mutual value. Thinking about
what happens at an art exhibition can help us to clarify our understanding of the concept. The gallery’s
curators, technical staff and front of house personnel use their knowledge, skills and capabilities to create
an experience for visitors. According to service-dominant logic, the resulting exhibition is an input to
activity by the customer in co-producing a gallery visit. The exhibition is used by visitors in creating
value for themselves, bringing to it their own knowledge, life experience and skills. They also create
value for the gallery by their participation, feedback, admission payment (where relevant) and legit-
imation of its activities. None of this value can be created exclusively by either gallery or visitor in
isolation – hence the term co-creation.
Depending on your point of view and marketing context, service-dominant logic can seem a more or
less plausible way of understanding marketing. It remains the subject of academic debate (e.g. Campbell
Product 101
Box 4.2 The real thing

Authenticity is important to customer experience – but what does it take to be authentically real? In
a museum context ‘indexical’ objects ‘indicate’ reality, such as the very desk at which an author sat,
or an original manuscript. ‘Iconic’ objects are things that offer an image (‘icon’) of reality, such as a
reproduction of an author’s desk, or typical desk from the time. But what truly makes for an
authentic experience is what the visitor does with an object, whether it is indexically or iconically
authentic.
Research at two New Zealand museums suggests the success of different approaches to
authenticity. Where iconic objects are to the fore (as at 56 Eden Street, writer Janet Frame’s
childhood home) visitors benefit from encouragement to enjoy a hands-on experience. Guides at
the museum provide information about the author’s early life in the house, encouraging visitors to
handle reproductions such as a replica of a notebook found under the floorboards, or to use furniture
similar to what the author herself might have used. This active co-production brings the visitors
closer to the ‘real’ Janet Frame by allowing them to enter into her imaginative world using their own
knowledge and fantasies.
Where indexical objects are to the fore, the museum’s role is more one of controlling and guiding
the visitor experience. Because of the intrinsic preciousness of many of the objects at the Katherine
Mansfield Birthplace museum as relics of the author, hands-on experience is restricted. Most
exhibits are in cases or roped off. Here the role of the guide is to help visitors interpret the display,
and the museum’s atmosphere more generally, as a way of immersing themselves in nostalgia
associated with the author’s work. In both museums, the key to a meaningfully authentic
experience is to create the appropriate co-production conditions for visitors.
Source: adapted from Thyne & Hede, 2016.
et al. (2013) who criticize it for downplaying the importance of material resources). But it offers a
potentially useful perspective to arts marketers. It suggests an active role for customers, and recognizes
the different forms of value that they create from arts experience. It also underlines the role of arts
marketers as cultural intermediaries (discussed in Chapter 1) shaping the co-production and co-creation
of meaning on which value in the arts depends. In the next section, on levels of product, we will explore
the various facets of arts experience that generate such value.
Levels of product
Andreasen and Kotler (2008) and, in a classic article, Levitt (1969) have provided useful conceptual
maps which separate the dimensions of product into distinct levels (Figure 4.2), whether goods or ser-
vices are involved.
Core benefit
At the centre of an arts offering is the core benefit which motivates purchase. When we define marketing
as activity aimed at ‘identifying and satisfying customer requirements’ it is important to remember that
the customer defines the requirement. The organization aims to satisfy it on the customer’s terms. So an
appreciation of what kind of core benefit is being sought by arts customers in a given situation is essential
to a sound marketing strategy. An understanding of benefits sought gives clues to motivation which can
then be reflected in promotional copy and imagery, as well as refinements to the product itself.
102 Product
Artistic product
Artistic
experience
Branding Venue
Core ambience
Atmosphere benefit
Staff
attitudes
Processes
Ancillary Catering
Physical
products
Conventions environment
Workshops Central Merchandise
experience
Programmes
Affiliation Corporate hospitality Recordings Practitioner
Extended
Friend experience Volunteer
Legator Donor
Potential
experience
Figure 4.2 Four levels of product in the arts experience.
The nature of artistic experience

Aesthetic emotion – the powerful feelings inspired by a work of art – is the core benefit sought by most
customers of arts organizations. Reflection on how artistic experience works, and the kinds of needs it
satisfies in customers, can help identify what is unique about marketing the arts and separate it from the
related areas of leisure and hospitality marketing. Hirschman (1983), a pioneer in the study of hedonic
consumption (such as the kind of sensation seeking, emotion and fantasy connected with arts experi-
ence), identifies four types of hedonic consumption behaviour which provide a starting point for
understanding arts experience from a marketing perspective:
Problem projection: this suggests that people find value in things like tragedy on stage because it
gives them a safe space to contemplate difficult issues, making them better equipped to cope with
similar challenges in real life.
Role projection: similar to problem projection, the imaginative process of identifying strongly with
particular characters in a story, or with the struggles or perspective of a particular artist. This enables
customers to elaborate their sense of themselves through vicarious experience.
Fantasy fulfilment: not restricted to the arts, but an important motivator nevertheless, is the use of artistic
experience to help create fantasies and enhance reality through imaginative or aesthetic stimulus.
Escapism: the entertainment value of being taken out of oneself by an arts experience, which can act
as a refreshing diversion from the mundanity and stresses of everyday life.
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There are many motivations and benefits associated with arts experience, but thinking about how your
arts offering provides opportunities for any or all of the behaviours listed here can help guide your choice
of marketing tactics at a macro level. Self-projection by customers into problems or roles reminds us of
the importance of powerful stories in arts experience, and the related need to convey a sense of narrative
in marketing activity and promotional materials. The role of fantasy and escapism in hedonic behaviour
might act as encouragement to consider emotional and imaginative cues, in order to trigger these
motivations in potential customers.
Needs and wants

Needs are basic human drives that can be allayed for a while, but never go away completely. For example,
the need for entertainment as a relief from boredom might be satisfied by streaming a video one evening.
But however enjoyable the experience, boredom will inevitably recur at some future point and need
allaying once more. Wants are the individual expressions of needs, and are shaped by personal tastes and
socio-cultural circumstances. Thus, ‘I am bored’ is a need, but ‘I want to watch a musical’ is a want.
Marketing is often accused of creating needs and wants. Marketers reply that what they actually do is to
recognize needs and find ways of fulfilling them which consumers find appropriate and attractive.
What kind of needs, then, does the experience of the arts satisfy? The American researcher Abraham
Maslow (1943) came up with a way of analysing needs which still influences how marketers think about
consumer behaviour: the ‘Hierarchy of Needs’ (Figure 4.3). The base of the pyramid represents the needs
that human beings must satisfy to maintain themselves: what Maslow called ‘homeostatic’ needs (from
the Greek word for staying in the same place). Without fulfilling hunger, thirst and warmth needs, life
would be unsustainable. The next level features safety needs. Once our basic needs have been satisfied,
the issue of security from a predatory environment rears its head. As soon as you have more than the bare
essentials of life, this suggests, you need to protect them. Social needs then rise to the fore. Humans need a
sense of belonging and involvement. They also have a competitive streak, and their social needs develop
Type of need
Delight
Discernment
Self-actualization
Knowledge
Connoisseurship
Enhanced self-image
Prestige Esteem
Conversation material
Affiliation opportunities
Social
Recognition
Participation
Secure facilities
Car parking
Safety
Safe access
Well-trained confident staff
Lighting and ventilation
Comfort
Physiological
Warmth
Refreshment facilities
Figure 4.3 Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, adapted for the arts experience.
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into the next layer of esteem needs seeking status and power. The final level represents self-actualization
needs. This level incorporates the ideas of education and self-development. It suggests a need for
transformation and transcendence, the need to realize your full potential.
Maslow’s ideas offer a way of approaching the question of what kind of needs arts experience satisfies.
It is tempting to see them as exclusively, or predominantly, at the self-actualization level. Education and
self-improvement may well motivate some audience members. But others are seeking to be moved rather
than improved. Where does a sense of emotional engagement fit into Maslow’s hierarchy? Depending on
the context (and the customer), it might exist across self-actualization, esteem and social needs. Arguably
one might find elements of it on the lower levels too. Re-examining the hierarchy of needs in the context
of the spread of benefits available to a visitor to an exhibition suggests that the arts offer satisfactions at all
levels rather than just the obvious one of self-actualization:
Self-actualization:
– increased knowledge of artist or period
– greater enjoyment through widened taste (possible influence on own technique if a painter or
student)
– ability to compare and contrast with previous experience
Esteem:
– prestige of gallery surroundings
– customer care includes an element of deference
– enhanced self-image through being able to discuss the latest exhibition
Social:
– pictures provide something to discuss with partner or companion
– opportunity to join ‘Friends’ of gallery
– possibility of meeting friends and acquaintances at the exhibition
Safety:
– cloakroom facilities to store coat and bag
– secure car parking
– properly trained staff and clear fire exits
Physiological:
– adequate lighting and ventilation
– warmth
– refreshment facilities
The further down the hierarchy we go, the more remote from the actual experience of the art objects
themselves the benefits appear to be. But they are all related to the experience of seeing the art in a given
environment at a particular time, so it is impossible effectively to separate one aspect from any other.
Trade-offs are possible. For example, the customer might be prepared to put up with inadequate
refreshment facilities because of easy parking.
We can conclude that the arts experience offers satisfaction to a complex of needs rather than only one.
While this complicates the marketing task of interpreting and communicating the benefits to customers, it
means that there is a virtually inexhaustible number of angles from which they can be approached. It also
means that there is a diversity of ways in which managing the product effectively can introduce small but
important improvements to satisfy needs more effectively.
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The central experience

The tangible aspects of the arts experience surround the core benefit, and mediate it to the customer in an
acceptable and appropriate way. This level embraces not only the artistic element itself, but also every
aspect of its delivery: venue ambience, staff attitudes, ease of access, and so on. Branding, discussed in
Chapter 5, sums up this overall customer experience in a coherent set of meanings which can be evoked
and represented through design and visual identity.
The features of the central experience are only important as a means to the desired end of the benefit
being purchased. One of the pitfalls into which organizations of any kind can fall is to confuse features
with benefits, becoming too focused on the sophistication or technical ingenuity of what they produce
rather than how it actually satisfies a customer’s needs. A theatre’s production manager might be very
proud of some new stage technology, or the artistic director might want to stress that a classic play is being
performed in a new translation. But are such features of the product relevant to the customer in any way
other than the benefit they lead to? Better to emphasize the spectacular effect rather than the technology
leading to it, or the fresh take on a well-known story than the new translation itself. Service-dominant
logic, framing product as a way of facilitating customer activity rather than as an end in itself, helps keeps
the focus on benefits as an outcome.
At this central level of product it can be helpful to identify a further three ‘Ps’ for service-oriented
marketers to add to the four ‘Ps’ model of the goods-oriented marketing mix (Zikmund & D’Amico,
1993):
Physical environment: an appropriate environment for the delivery of the experience is a way of
compensating for the intangibility of the artistic product – everything from well-designed signage to
the lobby carpet.
People: a human interface that will encourage co-production from the customer.
Process: placing the customer at the centre of things, particularly in routine but essential areas such
as booking procedures.
Physical environment
The artistic ‘product’ is delivered within an environment the physical characteristics of which have an
important effect on the quality of the experience for the consumer. Schechner (2003) describes the
journey typically involved in attending a live performance – the various thresholds that need to be crossed
as one travels into the theatre district, to the building, into the foyer, and finally into the auditorium. This
succession of thresholds finally locates the audience member in the ‘sacred space’ of performance as the
lights go down and the show begins.
The sense of mystique itself can be a barrier. Surveys frequently reveal that a significant proportion of
any audience are either first-time or very infrequent theatregoers. Their unfamiliarity with the conven-
tions associated with arts venues needs to be addressed through high standards of customer care and a
welcoming environment. The increasing integration in museums and galleries of physical signposting
and electronic wayfinding via connected devices is an opportunity to make customers feel at home and
more in control of their experiences in unfamiliar territory.
The experience of live theatre can itself be enhanced by presentation in non-standard physical
environments. The Austrian touring theatre company Cafe Fuerte (which promises ‘great stories in small
places’ (Cafe Fuerte, n.d.)) specializes in taking work to the parts other theatre companies can’t (or don’t)
reach – including a train, snowy mountainsides, museums, restaurants and a farm. Performing classical
music and opera in the open air can reframe what might be perceived by some audiences as an elitist or
off-puttingly serious art form as lighter and more celebratory. Of course, an outdoor environment can be
106 Product
Box 4.3 Appiness in the museum

Apps for use on smartphones and other connected devices are enriching the physical environment
for visitors at the world’s leading art galleries, and opening up virtual experiences of art to anybody
with an internet connection. Most offer images of objects and pictures from the collection with
commentary; themed tours; and details of temporary exhibitions, opening hours, facilities, and
ways of supporting the institution. As well as replacing unwieldy paper maps with the convenience
of zoomable electronic ones, many apps feature location technology to feed users the right
information wherever they are on site.
A pioneer in the field was Poland’s Neon Museum, dedicated to the documentation and
preservation of Cold War-era Polish neon signs. Based in an ex-factory site in Warsaw’s trendy
Praga district, the museum uses Bluetooth-enabled ‘beacons’ to guide visitors through its collection
of striking, but potentially mystifying, exhibits. The Cleveland Museum of Art in Ohio goes a step
further with its Artlens app. As well as offering themed multimedia tours, event information,
collection highlights and location-sensitive navigation, Artlens allows you to point your device’s
camera at a picture or object for in-depth interpretation such as X-ray images or historical background.
With appropriate consent from visitors, location-sensitive technology offers organizations the
possibility of automatic admission charging and customized experiences for different groups. It
facilitates customer analytics on an unprecedented scale by tracking visitors through gallery space.
In turn visitors can easily ‘like’ and share images of exhibits on social media, and participate in
game-like activities such as scavenger hunts designed by the museum based around selected works.
Source: adapted from Mallik, 2014.
challenging, but the popularity of promenade and alfresco productions suggests that this form of delivery
often offers benefits which outweigh the risks.
People
Well-trained staff, managing the flow of customers through an arts event, are fundamental to the cus-
tomer’s experience. Many large institutions now employ a customer services manager in view of the
importance and diversity of audience needs. As venues are driven by artistic or financial imperatives to
make fuller use of their facilities for non-performance activities (such as daytime events, business and
conference hire) the concept of customer service is becoming ever more important. It cannot just be left to
staff in immediate contact with the customer. A genuinely marketing-oriented organization will imbue all
its members with a sense of their contribution to the end-user’s experience. The marketing function is best
placed to take the initiative in this process by marketing internally as well as externally. Given the
pressures on most arts marketers to focus on external audiences, this can be overlooked in practice. As
further discussed in Chapter 10, regular marketing updates at meetings or via other forms of internal
communication, sharing good news (and less good news) about performance and plans, and ensuring that
colleagues are listened to for their views and ideas, are all essential to embedding a whole-organization
approach to marketing.
Process
Process refers to the systems through which a customer experiences a service. This is obviously a very
wide definition as it might cover any aspect of an encounter with the arts. But identifying and improving
Product 107
aspects of process over which they have control (such as admission systems and ticketing) as well as
seeking to influence aspects of process which may be a shared responsibility with other members of the
organization (such as the way an exhibition is organized physically in space), marketers can hope to
enhance this aspect of the mix for customers.
Technology is enabling researchers to deepen their understanding of how customers themselves
process the experience of something like a gallery visit. By giving visitors to a Swedish museum
wearable tracking devices, Tröndle (2014) was able to follow their paths through a particular exhibition.
He discovered that walking patterns were determined by what he called ‘space cells’ – units of gallery
space with objects in them which began with a reference point of some sort like a painting, or a piece of
exhibition-related text, but which made sense as a sub-unit of experience to the visitor. Often the way
visitors made sense of the space was not what was intended. They tended not to stand back to admire big
paintings, nor move closer to more detailed works. This kind of insight allows designers to organize
material in ways led by actual visitor behaviour. A notable feature of this research is that the design of the
space itself has far more influence over what a visitor will pause in front of than the fame or market value
of the paintings on show.
The extended experience

Product aspects at this third level of the model (Figure 4.2) tend to merge into other areas of the marketing
mix. Credit terms such as instalment payment for season tickets relates to pricing; after-sales contact such
as pre-event information or post-show email questionnaires can be considered as promotion and research
activity respectively; and recordings or streamed performances can be seen as an aspect of distribution.
But all take their cue from the nature of the product itself. By enhancing these extended aspects of the
customer experience, the organization can tailor its offering to specific sectors of the market.
Box 4.4 Finding the right words

Conversation analysis is the close study of speech and gesture in interaction. It can reveal some
interesting things about how the details of communication processes between customers and staff
can affect outcomes. A study of people buying admission tickets at a UK art gallery observed the
effect of different ways in which the sales assistant suggested customers add a donation to their
ticket price thus qualifying for Gift Aid, a UK tax rebate scheme benefiting charities.
Although information about the scheme was visible at point of purchase, if customers were not
asked directly only 3 per cent donated voluntarily.
Presented with the alternatives (‘Would you like to pay the standard price or the Gift Aid?’)
41 per cent donated.
When they were asked with what conversation analysts call a ‘mitigated yes/no alternative’
(‘Would you like to pay the Gift Aid at all?’) 79 per cent donated.
But when the mitigation, or softening, was removed to make the question more direct (‘Would
you like to Gift Aid that?’) the rate went up to 95 per cent.
This study did not attempt to be statistically reliable, so this finding cannot be taken as a template
for surefire sales success in gaining Gift Aid donations. But it demonstrates how minute details of
process in interactions with customers can have far-reaching consequences.
Source: adapted from Llewellyn & Hindmarsh, 2013.
108 Product
Offering an extended level of experience has a potential in arts marketing to enhance customer
experience as well as increasing income. At most opera houses customers can not only buy seats for the
performance, but also books, scores, recordings and other operatic paraphernalia to make their transient
experience of art more fixed. The extended level of experience can also play a part in audience
development. Opera companies can reach vastly increased audiences by cinema, ‘big screen’ relays and
streaming, compared to standard theatrical performances. Workshops for education and training can
extend experience for a production of a Shakespeare play for both new and existing audiences. YouTube
is a way of showcasing the work of a dance company which anyone with a connected device can access.
Programmes and catalogues

Programmes are a service adjunct which should complement the experience of a live event. Apart from
their value as souvenirs (frequently kept well after the performance), they should also enrich the
immediate experience. Normally programmes are produced on a contractual arrangement with pub-
lishing companies who sell advertising in them. Predicting likely audience numbers for order quantities is
a very fine art in order to maximize profit for the venue. Alternatively, organizations can produce pro-
grammes direct, contracting out advertising sales, or do the whole job themselves (as do many amateur
companies, to whom income from this part of the operation is crucial).
As we have seen, arts marketing should aim at equipping customers to be better co-producers of arts
experience. In this sense the performing arts can take some inspiration from the visual arts where the
concept of a catalogue to accompany and interpret an exhibition is a well-established service adjunct. But
in spite of the audience enrichment opportunity presented by programmes, their quality remains a
weakness of many arts organizations. Instead of putting the work in context, theatre programmes, like an
exhibition catalogue, often major on lengthy lists of names of those involved in the production and venue.
They seem designed for internal rather than external consumption.
Merchandise
Merchandise can offer useful income as well as enhancing the customer experience, but at a financial
risk. Items related to a particular exhibition or production have a shorter life than venue-related branded
items, though long-running shows with high predicted seat occupancy (such as pantomimes) are an
excellent merchandising opportunity. Badges, pens, toys, related books and media are examples of
successful Christmas show merchandise. In their planning, arts organizations must be aware of minimum
order quantities, lead times and arrangements for reordering.
Venue-specific merchandise (T-shirts, mugs, stationery, tote bags etc.) can provide income if there are
retailing facilities in the longer term. Such merchandise is also a useful adjunct to sponsorship deals.
Box 4.5 Get with the programme

However spectacular their productions, London’s West End theatres have been panned for poor
programmes. Theatre and opera critic Rupert Christiansen reports many as little more than
overpriced lists of previous cast appearances, with minimal information about the show itself.
Christiansen recommends a minimum of eight pages of editorial, a cap on cover prices (which, by
encouraging sales, would boost advertising revenue) and revealing more in performer biographies
than just previous appearances: “hobbies, marital status, sexual proclivities, educational attain-
ments, criminal convictions, pet hates and favourite holiday destinations are of more interest”.
Source: Christiansen, 2013.
Product 109
Box 4.6 Merch ado : : :

In the wake of disruptive changes in music sales and distribution, musicians are hard pressed to
make ends meet. Sales of recordings alone are no longer enough except for the very biggest names,
with touring and concert income becoming more important, as is merchandise or ‘merch’ as it is
known in the industry. Merch contributed around 6 per cent of the average rock band’s income in
2011, and possibly a tenth of that for jazz and classical musicians. A further benefit of creatively
conceived merch is visibility for a band’s brand.
Such creativity ranges from the quirky (heavy metal band Gwar Gwar have put their name to a
Gwar BBQ sauce) to the inspired (the famously raucous Metallica offers a branded ice pack to
soothe heads post-show). Boy band One Direction scored a hit with their own-brand toothpaste to
keep fans smiling. And as long ago as the 1960s the Beatles were pioneering creative merch with
wigs offering fans an instant makeover to the Fab Four’s magnificent mop-top look.
Source: adapted from Locker, 2014.
If a sponsor is negotiating hospitality as part of the package of benefits available from a venue, the inclusion
of a branded gift for each guest can make the evening even more memorable at a very small extra cost. The
quality of the merchandise itself is, of course, paramount. If a sweatshirt is to carry a logo it will be acting as
an organizational ambassador. Careful selection and testing of items and suppliers is very important.
Mottner (2014) argues that retailing can contribute directly towards furthering museums’ and gal-
leries’ missions as well as generating revenue. By connecting to the collection, the nature of the mer-
chandise itself can extend customers’ experience and appreciation of the works on show. For example
many galleries offer customized digital printing services to provide high-quality reproductions to order.
Jewellery and accessories inspired by objects or paintings are further ways of extending the artistic
product while making a strong emotional connection with the wearer. Well-trained staff and informative
point of sale material and packaging can also help customers integrate what they experience in an arts
venue and their life beyond it.
Services to business
Sponsorship is only one way in which business and the arts can exchange benefits. Depending on their
facilities, building-based organizations can offer room hire and conference services, although compe-
tition in this area tends to be fierce with standards benchmarked against commercial meeting venues such
as hotels and conference centres. Staging a product launch or a sales meeting in a theatre, gallery or
historic building can make a dramatic impact. Networking into local trade groups such as tourism
associations or chambers of commerce can provide avenues to likely customers, and reinforce percep-
tions of an arts organization’s active relevance to the local business community.
The potential experience

This final level of product – the outer ring of the model (Figure 4.2) – results from the way products need
to change to keep pace with developing needs. Given the importance of innovation in the arts, arts
organizations ought to be good at keeping their provision relevant to new audiences and refreshing it for
existing ones. For an individual arts customer, the potential experience covers a number of forms of
deeper involvement: affiliation or membership, becoming a donor or volunteer, or even becoming a more
active participant by taking up a particular art form as a practitioner.
110 Product
Friends
Friends are groups of enthusiasts who actively support their organization by practical and/or financial
means. Often the host organization will assist in starting Friends groups – recognizing the considerable
benefits they offer, or prompted by a crisis such as potential closure. From an arts organization’s point of
view, the prime motivator for setting up a Friends scheme is usually to generate income, though cul-
tivating long-term loyalty among audiences is also a key driver.
Slater (2014) suggests a categorization of arts membership schemes into three broad groups: sub-
scribers and season ticket holders; Friends or members; and patrons or recognized donors. It is worth
noting that outside the performing arts, subscribers and members are a very similar category. Art gallery
and museum membership tends to offer unlimited free admission for an annual fee. Dating from 1958,
one of the longest established schemes in the UK is Tate Members – numbering over 115,000 in 2015
with a renewal rate of 89 per cent (Tate Members, 2015). Motivation for membership in arts organizations
goes beyond economic considerations to include advance access to information, convenience, first pick
at popular events and flexibility. Self-identification and status motives are particularly evident in visual
arts organizations (Slater & Armstrong, 2010).
Such research justifies the positioning of membership benefits as a way for people to get closer to the
organization and its work, rather than to save money at its expense. Friends of the Royal Opera House
(ROH), Covent Garden, is another longstanding group, founded in 1962. The current scheme offers
increasing levels of advanced booking privileges in step with a series of membership price tiers. Beyond
the first two these effectively become a form of recognized giving, offering supporter acknowledgement
at the appropriate level by name on the organization’s website. Apart from a 10 per cent discount in the
Royal Opera House shop, there are no reduced prices. Instead, Friends enjoy the opportunity to book
tickets before the general public. Lest this appear too exclusive, a much cheaper membership offering
privileged access to the organization’s activities is available for 16–30 year-olds who can thus become
Royal Opera House Insiders. The ROH scheme provides a good model for other Friends products with
its intelligent understanding of what supporters value and how incentives can be appropriately structured
in response.
Friends organizations are also sources of practical help. Some arts organizations make little or no use
of unpaid workers, others (such as festivals) could not survive without a substantial input of free labour
from the local community. However, for many arts attenders, volunteering can represent a valued
extension to their experience of the organization’s work. Successful volunteering relies on volunteer
and organization benefiting. It is no coincidence that this sounds like the mutual benefit underpinning
marketing. Bussell and Forbes (2003) adapt the concept of relationship marketing to frame their
research on best practice in volunteer management. They note the importance of clear objectives,
written job descriptions and professional management, including induction, training and development
alongside paid staff. An important finding is the extent to which volunteers are motivated by social
needs. The key to retaining them as productive members of any organization lies in policies which
acknowledge their “need to be valued, recognized and appreciated” (Project manager cited in Bussell
& Forbes, 2003).
Product decisions
Decisions about product are invariably complex in the arts. They are fundamentally related to the mission
of the organization, will significantly influence the nature of the audiences, and have major implications
for revenue. So an understanding of the nature of product life cycles and the implications of product
portfolios can be helpful.
Product 111
Box 4.7 Getting involved

A study of over 60 museums across Europe and America reveals three web-based developments
in how visitors are extending their experience: as communicators, mediators and artists.
Communicator visitors participate in social media, ranging from Facebook pages (such as New
York’s Museum of Modern Art, which has attracted one and a half million friends) to more
specialized ventures such as the 2013 launch of Marseille’s Musee des Civilisations de
l’Europe et de la Mediterranee (MUCEM) which crowd-sourced its promotional campaign.
Mediator visitors assume roles traditionally monopolized by museum professionals,
effectively editing the experience of the museum for themselves and others. Inviting the
public to associate their own keywords (tags) with online museum content can create a more
meaningful way of classifying objects for many visitors than the official system. Social media
have also allowed users to co-curate content as in the Museum of Fine Arts Boston exhibition
‘Boston Loves Impressionism’ where users cast web votes to select paintings.
Artist roles lead to the production of content itself. A good example is the National Museum
of American History in Washington exhibition ‘Growing Up in 1950–1965’. The museum
invited people to post family photographs on Flickr, and selected exhibits from the results.
From a marketing point of view these developments present exciting new avenues of product
extension through web-based relationships. A less comfortable consequence in the longer term
may be to call into question the cultural authority and legitimacy enjoyed by museums themselves.
Source: Pulh & Mencarelli, 2015.
Product life cycle

Like the consumers who use them, products have life cycles. Because new needs and wants, and new
ways of satisfying them, are constantly emerging, products cannot stand still. The traditional product life
cycle model suggests that a product will go through four stages – introduction, growth, maturity and
decline – with appropriate marketing tactics for each phase. For example, pricing during the introduction
stage is usually set at a level to attract new buyers into trying the product. Higher prices to maximize
profits come later in the cycle when the product is established. Following the mature stage, decline
inevitably sets in. At this point a harvesting strategy becomes appropriate – maximizing returns from the
shrinking market and finally withdrawing the product when it becomes uneconomic. As a model the
product life cycle (PLC) is theoretically elegant, but practically problematic. The pace of technological
and social change has accelerated to the point where PLCs are becoming shorter and less predictable.
Even in commercial marketing, the PLC model is used only as a very rough guide. The essential thing to
take from it is that product is a dynamic not a static variable.
Product life cycles also exist in the arts. For example Mahoney (2012) describes how Kenyan art
exporters, assisted by the spread of the internet and mobile phone technology, have shifted from tribal
motifs and ethnic branding (e.g. Kisii soapstone carving or Kamba woodcarving) to emphasizing Fair
Trade and environmental sustainability in their work. Traditional carvings of pipe-smoking men and
bare-breasted women have given way to abstract designs featuring stylized connected figures. This
reflects the market’s taste for an aesthetic of global equality and the aspirations of the carvers and
exporters themselves to be part of the global community.
112 Product
Elements of product need to be constantly reviewed for their relevance to audiences. This can lead to
difficult decisions about dropping products which might once have been extremely successful but
are being superseded by new needs. Unless culled, they will absorb time and resources which could be
better applied elsewhere. In an arts organization, programming decisions will not be at the discretion of
the marketing function. But marketing’s role includes monitoring and making sense of changes in the
external environment and championing emerging audience needs in how the organization is developing
its offerings.
Advances in technology often occasion new products, and have stimulated new forms of artistic
expression (such as artwork specifically conceived for the internet) and new ways of accessing art.
For example, Google’s Art and Culture project allows interactive access to hundreds of institutions’
collections worldwide, as well as curating its own selections of high-definition images of visual assets
(from art and nature). In some respects the experience of art on the web can improve on a physical
gallery visit. The opportunity to pore for long periods over minute details of a picture reproduced in
high resolution is something it would be difficult to achieve in real life. Visitors’ expectations of
interpretative material and technology in real-life gallery visits may well be shaped by such devel-
opments, making this a likely area for product innovation by museums and performance venues in
physical space.
Product portfolio management

Few manufacturing organizations can afford to rely on only one product. In spite of the simplicity of such
an approach, the risk of having all the organization’s eggs in one basket would be too high. Arts
organizations are in a similar position. They need to spread the risk involved in producing arts experi-
ences for customers by planning not only a balanced menu of artistic product, but also by maximizing the
income they can earn from other activities and ancillary products.
The fact that customer needs change means that at any one time some parts of an organization’s overall
portfolio will be more relevant than others. The requirement to manage a combination of offerings in a
way that optimizes the benefits to the customer as well as the returns to the organization has resulted in the
development of a number of product portfolio management models.
The first thing to say about such models is that, even for the packaged goods sector in which they were
originally developed, they offer approximate guides rather than prescriptive rules. With this proviso, they
can be useful in analysing and planning how a mixture of offerings fits together. What makes them useful
is not their accuracy but their flexibility and the insights they can stimulate.
The most famous example of a portfolio model is the Boston Consulting Group’s (BCG’s) matrix.
Founded in 1963, BCG is a business strategy firm whose ideas continue to influence many organizations.
The BCG matrix is based on research into packaged goods marketing in the expanding economy of post-
war USA. They found that not only do individual products have life cycles, but the markets in which they
exist have life cycles too, expanding and contracting according to broad patterns of demand. They
divided markets into those that were growing and those that were standing still or declining. Products, on
the other hand, were categorized according to whether their share of the market in which they operated
was high or low. This led to the picture shown in Figure 4.4.
Relating this model back to the products and services offered by an individual organization leads to the
following categorizations:
High-share products in high-growth markets: Stars

These products are the mainstay of success. Their importance to the organization means that they
need to be prioritized in terms of management attention and resources. An arts example might be an
orchestral ‘pop concert’ by a big-name orchestra.
Product 113
Market share
High Low
Problem
High
Stars
Children
Rate of market growth
Cash
Low
Dogs
Cows
Figure 4.4 The Boston Consulting Group matrix.
High-share products in low-growth markets: Cash Cows

These products are the bedrock of many organizations’ income, but are not capable of further growth
because the market in which they operate is no longer expanding. A municipal choral society’s
rendition of Handel’s Messiah will appeal to a predictable but essentially stable audience.
Low-share products in high-growth markets: Problem Children
These are the possible Stars of the future. Although they need a lot of resources and time, they offer
great potential because they provide a foothold in an expanding area. Many arts organizations
have identified services to business (conference facilities, promotional services, training) as ways
of accessing a growth area.
Low-share products in low-growth markets: Dogs
While still consuming management time and resources, these are products which fail to justify their
long-term existence. The markets they are in are not performing as well as others open to the organ-
ization, and their share of the available business is low. A theatre group offering community touring
productions to a rural area with a declining population might need to reconsider its role, for example.
The BCG saw business strategy as moving resources around an organization so that money and time were
not wasted on poorly performing products. The resulting advice to managers was to “polish the Stars,
milk the Cows, feed the Problem Children and shoot the Dogs”. In other words, resources should be
concentrated on the opportunities most likely to yield returns. Products which are underperforming with
no hope of long-term recovery should be jettisoned before they drag the rest of the business under.
Arts organizations need to manage the effective use of time and resources towards their goals through
examining their portfolio of offerings, although economic performance needs to be balanced with artistic
or social objectives. Especially in a people business such as the arts, decisions about dropping activities
are difficult to implement. For example, a Friends organization might have outlived its usefulness and
thus need restructuring (in spite of considering itself a mainstay of loyal support).
114 Product
One of the advantages of a portfolio model is the way it allows simple visual communication of the
relationship between a number of complex variables. While this can lead to oversimplification, it can
promote better teamwork between arts managers and artists themselves by identifying issues in a way
which makes them easier to discuss.
In summary, the use of portfolio models in product planning has a number of advantages:
It makes assumptions explicit and encourages quantification

It facilitates an appreciation of the way a programme fits together
It enables the projected work of the organization to be clearly measured against its mission and
priorities
It helps identify gaps in provision
Service quality
We have emphasized that a customer’s experience of an arts organization’s offering depends on inter-
actions with everyone with whom he or she comes into contact. Furthermore, the Servuction model’s
concept of ‘invisible’ systems reveals that even those working behind the scenes have a direct impact on
the nature of this experience. Customer care is therefore an issue for everyone in the organization.
Managing customer care is one of the most important contributions marketing can make to the success of
an arts organization. Roisin Bell (2010) has written a practical guide detailing a low-cost route to dia-
gnosing and rectifying customer care problems specifically for arts organizations, drawing on experience
in Ireland. An important part of her recommended approach is the use of ‘mystery shopping’ – in other
words to have members of the marketing department, or (better still) associates not known to the
organization, pose as customers and offer critical feedback on their experiences.
A good place to start is with the development of a complaints policy. Instead of seeing complaints as
threatening or negative (a temptation for all organizations, especially those with the kind of self-belief
that is commonplace in the arts), they should be regarded as an opportunity for learning. Organizations
Box 4.8 Open Forum

A study of programming strategy between 2002 and 2011 at the Forum Theatre, at Le Blanc-Mesnil
(a town of just over 50,000 inhabitants just outside Paris), illustrates the complexity of balancing a
product portfolio. The statistics show that different customers – whether subscribers, people
qualifying for discounted tickets or full-price single-ticket buyers – have different preferences and
attitudes to risk. The theatre presents a wide range of work, encompassing drama, concerts and
dance, as well as a lively outreach programme to encourage audiences for contemporary work.
The Forum opened in 1993 and in 2000 received official national designation as a ‘recognized
stage’. The majority of its state funding comes from local government, and it has a keen sense of
mission to local audiences. So much so that in 2006 the director instituted a scheme called ‘Bring on
the Artists!’ (Faites entrer les artistes!) whereby local residents participated in programming
decisions through online voting. Promising as this might seem in an era of co-production as a
marketing philosophy, the response was somewhat muted. In spite of sustained efforts by the PR
team, the most votes cast have been 1,200 in 2009, stimulated by the use of video trailers on the
theatre’s website. Subsequent rounds of voting showed a rapid decline in interest, suggesting that
there is limited appetite for active involvement at this level. From 2012 the director reverted to
programming using his own judgement of what would suit audiences.
Source: adapted from Urrutiaguer, 2014.
Product 115
such as restaurants and hotels actively check on performance, giving customers a direct opportunity to
complain. Feedback cards and a waiter returning to your table during the meal to ask ‘Is everything
satisfactory?’ are ways of doing this. Arts organizations can emulate this either in venues or online
after events.
A complaints policy allows an organization to accept criticism in a way that makes the customer feel
that they have been properly treated as well as helping the organization to improve its performance. Here
is a five-step approach which can be readily adapted:
1 Thank the customer for the feedback and look positive.

2 Clarify the problem with the customer.
3 Apologize – once. Too many apologies may sound like words rather than action.
4 Make a personal commitment to the customer to do something about the problem. Be specific as to
the next step – for example, a telephone call to confirm a course of action.
5 Check back with the customer when you have resolved the issue to make sure your action has been
effective.
Ideally the aim should be to prevent problems by anticipating them as far as possible. But by creating
reliable systems to deal with problems as they occur, an arts organization can hope to keep customers on
board, as well as eliminating the need for expensive remedial work. Getting it right first time also focuses
the mind on what is essential about the service and what is irrelevant. This can be called ‘doing the right
things right’. In organizational terms it means a clearer enactment of the mission statement and an
increased responsiveness to customers. In customer terms it means a richer, more rewarding experience,
which is likely to become a regular source of inspiration and enjoyment.
Conclusion
The core product of the arts – artistic experience – cannot be driven by market forces in the way that
commercial products are (though even commercial products have to risk taking customers into the
unknown from time to time). What makes artistic products stand out is the kind of distinctiveness and
innovation that surprises and moves people in a way they will remember, perhaps even to the point where
they see life differently as a result. In the words of the radical theatre company Welfare State Inter-
national, art aims for “eyes on stalks, not bums on seats” (Fox, 2002). Along with the associated benefits
of entertainment, education, socializing, satisfying curiosity and so on, the possibility of intense aesthetic
experience is what drives people to places like galleries, concert halls and theatres.
Marketing’s role in the arts is to facilitate the conditions for customers to have such experiences. We
have seen how this depends not just on the quality of the art itself, but on the contribution made by the
whole organization (and, indeed, by other customers). We have briefly reviewed the idea of ‘service-
dominant logic’ (Vargo & Lusch, 2004) as it might apply to the arts, and noted how its focus on the active
customer resonates with arts marketers’ aim to create engaged, responsive audiences for the work of their
organizations. Part of the job is to identify ways in which the total product can be enhanced – by offerings
that complement or extend it, to find new ways of drawing customers closer to the mission of the
organization and offering them richer benefits in turn.
Customers and their needs change over time. The marketing department of an arts organization can
help it recognize and respond to these changes by maintaining an external perspective – identifying
potential new product opportunities and helping review the relevance of the organization’s current
portfolio of work. Monitoring and maintaining customer service quality inside the organization is also a
key marketing responsibility. Whether inputting to programming discussions, exploring potential new
areas of business or implementing service quality procedures, marketing adds value by representing the
customer’s perspective on product.
116 Product
End of chapter discussion case study

4.1 It takes a village
The Mullae-dong district of western Seoul had its origins in early 20th-century textile
manufacturing. This remained its main economic activity until the Korean War (1950–1953)
when the metal industry replaced textiles as the district’s main focus. In 1980, government-led
industrial re-organization relocated major producers to Ansan, on the other side of Seoul. The
move marked the beginning of a decline for Mullae, sped by the economic crisis that overtook
South Korea in 1997. As factories closed the population dwindled, and the area looked ripe for the
kind of gentrification that has ripped the character out of many other urban communities.
Falling rents, good transport links and proximity to more fashionable districts attracted an influx
of young artists at the turn of the 21st century. By 2008 there were 80 studios in operation in
abandoned steelworks, and a population of about 150 artists living and working alongside the
surviving community of metalworkers. The result has been to turn Mullae into a cultural
destination within Seoul, referred to in visitor guides as ‘Mullae Art Village’. According to one
tourism website: “Artists and designers have started to move in beside the steel workers and
welders, bringing to the area inventive street art, small restaurants, cafes and a handful of quirky
shops.” (Lonely Planet, n.d.). There are also a number of galleries and music venues making the
Mullae Art Village a thriving cultural scene for locals and visitors alike.
This development has come from the community of artists themselves, rather than any external
intervention by arts policy makers or city managers. The pioneer artist residents forged links with
their neighbours by organizing art classes for young people and staging regular street
performances. One of the earliest initiatives, now a regular fixture on the Seoul arts calendar, is
the October Mullae International Arts Festival (MIAF). As international festivals go, it is a
relatively local affair. Little or no English is used in promotional materials – many of which are
basic posters or fliers. Tickets are either very cheap or non-existent. The lack of sophistication is
itself part of the festival ethos. Yet MIAF has attracted international artists and significant local
participation. It runs a very basic website, and several social media accounts (including Naver, the
leading Korean web portal) on a one-way informational basis. The organizers seem more
interested in personal contact with their customers at grass-roots level.
A strong theme in the artist community is one of resistance to official forms of management. In
2008 the artists led a successful campaign to head off a new local government-sponsored
redevelopment plan. There was also some discord about the threat to autonomy implied by
accepting official support from the Seoul Foundation for Arts and Culture (SFAC), a local
government initiative founded in 2005 to promote the role of the arts in rendering Seoul a more
livable and prosperous city. In the end, SFAC’s intervention was accepted – though not without
continuing controversy about how its funding should be deployed. The artists and the wider
community are involved in decisions on this – spreading support to non-artists such as metalworkers
whose work featured alongside that of the professionals in the 2012 Festival ‘Common Ground’.
One visible benefit has been the creation of the Seoul Art Space Mullae, one of 16 SFAC art
spaces in and around Seoul to encourage arts-led regeneration. Opened in 2010, it provides
facilities for both domestic and international artists, complementing the self-generated art village
as a professional creative resource on the previous site of a strip of steel material shops. It includes
shared workshop space, a flexible presentation area, recording studio and seminar room.
The impact of SFAC’s support continues to be problematic. There is suspicion within SFAC
that subsidies and shared decision making on their allocation has made some artists lazy and
complacent. The very local ‘vibe’ of the village risks becoming too inward looking. There is little
Product 117
or no marketing, nor plans for development, and a continuing resistance to the idea of management
except as spontaneous acts of organization by the community itself. Whether this is sustainable in
the longer term is debatable, but the Art Village is a fascinating example of a product-led arts
success story.
Sources: adapted from Lee, 2015; Lonely Planet, n.d.; SFAC, 2016.
Questions
1. From evidence in the case and any other information you can source about Mullae Art Village,
discuss the sustainability of its current way of working. How might applying the product life
cycle model to the Mullae International Art Festival improve its prospects of continued
success?
2. Write a paragraph of promotional copy for a holiday company based in your country
conveying the benefits of a visit to Mullae Art Village. Explain why you selected those
benefits in particular in relation to your target market.
3. Draw a levels of product diagram to represent either (a) the experience on offer to a tourist
from your country at Mullae Art Village or (b) the experience on offer to a local resident.
Identify one element within the diagram that could be enhanced to improve the outcomes for
the visitor concerned, and describe how this might be managed.
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5 Branding
Most arts organizations tend to hate the word brand, because it’s a very corporate, commercial word : : : but
we do need to rally around our brand because it’s merely a reflection of our personality, of who we are and
why we are.
(Carolyn Sims, Director of Marketing and Audience Engagement at English National Opera,
in Steven, 2016)
In this chapter we will:
Clarify the meaning of the term ‘brand’ – arguing that branding goes much further than logos or
design but is best understood as customer experience
Outline the history and rationale of branding as an activity, and discuss the role that branding can
play in achieving arts marketing goals
Explore the concepts of brand positioning and brand equity as they relate to the arts
Discuss brand-related issues such as brand extension, rebranding and brand architecture in an arts
marketing context
Branding is one of the most fundamental ideas in marketing, and one of the most controversial (Holt, 2002;
Klein, 1999), raising suspicions about marketing being a case of selling images rather than realities. In her
bestselling book No Logo (1999) journalist Naomi Klein took major corporations to task for removing
any societal or functional value that brands might once have had. Instead she sees them as an image
economy exploiting human vulnerability rather than addressing genuine need. It is not surprising, then, that
many people working in the arts (and no doubt many of their customers) distrust the idea of branding.
No Logo caught a wave of millennial anti-corporate feeling which manifested itself in widely pub-
licized protests at international trade meetings, and the worldwide ‘Occupy’ movement. It could be
argued that this wave of feeling has had a longer-term effect on the attention corporations pay to the
ethical and social sphere in which they operate (Birch, 2012). However, what Klein’s book is con-
demning is essentially an abuse of power through branding. Like marketing in general, branding can be a
powerful cultural and social force, and organizations should use their power responsibly. But in the long
term, successful branding is based on performance, not just imagery. It has to relate to genuine benefits
for the customer to be part of a sustainable business model – in the arts as elsewhere.
What is a brand?
In its simplest form, a brand is a mark of ownership. The term has its origin in the idea of something that is
burned indelibly on an object such as a packing case or an animal’s hide. A significant aspect of this

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4 Product

 The nature of goods and services

Goods and services

Inseparability of production and consumption

A model of service delivery

Other customers Servicescape (visible)

Box 4.1 What’s going on in your gallery?

Box 4.2 The real thing

Affiliation Corporate hospitality Recordings Practitioner

Figure 4.2 Four levels of product in the arts experience.

The nature of artistic experience

Needs and wants

The central experience

Box 4.3 Appiness in the museum

The extended experience

Box 4.4 Finding the right words

Programmes and catalogues

Box 4.5 Get with the programme

Box 4.6 Merch ado : : :

The potential experience

Box 4.7 Getting involved

Product life cycle

Product portfolio management

 High-share products in high-growth markets: Stars

Figure 4.4 The Boston Consulting Group matrix.

 High-share products in low-growth markets: Cash Cows

 It makes assumptions explicit and encourages quantification

Box 4.8 Open Forum

1 Thank the customer for the feedback and look positive.

End of chapter discussion case study

In this chapter we will:

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The nature of goods and services

High-share products in high-growth markets: Stars

High-share products in low-growth markets: Cash Cows

It makes assumptions explicit and encourages quantification