The New Concepts Shaping the Marketing Communication Strategies of Museums

• Author: Nechita, F.
• Position: Faculty of Sociology and Communication, Transilvania University of Brasov
• Pages: 269-278

Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Braşov

Series VII: Social Sciences • Law • Vol. 7 (56) No. 1 - 2014

THE NEW CONCEPTS SHAPING THE

MARKETING COMMUNICATION

STRATEGIES OF MUSEUMS

Florin NECHITA1

Abstract: Museums play an important role in promotion of the tourism

industries and creating local jobs. Being relat ed with the consumption of the

people’s leisure time, museums should build marketing commun ication strategies

inspired by the successful activities adopted by other entertainment industries

and learning institutions competing for the same people’s attention and interest.

The aim of all visitor-oriented approaches is to produce an immersive visitor

experience and that can be created by using ICTs technologies, creative ideas

from digital games and gamification techniques that proved to be successful in

other domains. For promoting museums as attractive destinations, guerilla

marketing campaigns have become options that museums should consid er.

Key words: visitor’s experience, virtual reality, augmented reality , guerilla

marketing, serious games.

1 Faculty of Sociology and Communication, Transilvania University of Brasov.

1. Introduction

Influenced by the steadily increasing of

living standards and levels of education in

the last decades, the interest of the people for

heritage goods has grown as well. A

museum is a non-profit, permanent

institution in the service of society and its

development, open to the public, which

acquires, conserves, researches,

communicates and exhibits the tangible and

intangible heritage of humanity and its

environment for the purposes of education,

study and enjoyment [46].

They are part of a universal cultural system

for the dissemination of knowledge and

experience. As other representative cultural

institutions, museums can attract tourists and

have a high potential for increasing their

contribution for developing local and

national economies through the enhancement

of employment and incomes. For example,

some studies revealed that the museum

industry from the United Kingdom have a

greater contribution to the national economy

than do the car manufacturing or advertising

and film industries and directly supports an

estimated 195,000 full-time equivalent jobs

state [40, p. 293-303]. From the ability to

generate jobs, the Guggenheim museum of

Bilbao creates an estimated 1.25 jobs for

every 1000 visitors [34, p. 155-162].

Strengthening the relationship between

citizens and museums in a local community

could represent an effective way of

community development using local cultural

resources and an instrument for creating

networks of civic engagement [37, p. 85-94].

Due to the changes appeared during the

last couple of decades, the new museum