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attracting customers, interaction, entertainment, interpretation, guidance, and education). All of the criteria are interlinked. The success of a service encounter is difficult to measure, as services are ambiguous. The concept of a “performance gap” is important in defining the ‘product’ of any service organization. The original Gaps Model, created in the 1980’s by Zeithaml, Parasuraman and Berry (1985), presents multiple possible gaps in the customer-provider relatioship in the service process. When simplified, customers have certain expectations and individual opinions of the service process, influenced by, for example, advertising, sales people, word- of-mouth (WOM), and pricing. Customers also have perceptions prior to the service process influenced by actual previous experiences and also shared experiences heard from other customers. Today these prior expectations and opinions are also created in social media. The online presence of the museums creates a certain image of them to customers that have not yet visited the actual museum, and hopefully strengthen the image of the museum to the customers that have visited the actual museum building. Comments of other users and the content posted by the museum create a story about the museum. Any mismatch between the previous expectations or perceptions and the actual service process will lead to a performance gap, thus letting the customer down. (see e.g. Gilmore 2003, 22; Bendapudi & Berry, 1997; Grönroos, 1988). The possibility of the performance gaps highlights the importance of communication, before, during, and also after the service encounter. Social media offers an appropriate surrounding for this communication. The entire museum experience may occur in an online surrounding with the help of new applications such as the Google Art project (see Google Art Project, 2011), or then social media can be added to a visit to a museum to enhance the experience into a more cohesive entity. Customers review the relational quality of services, before, during and after a service encounter. Most services are difficult to evaluate in before hand, and some are difficult to evaluate even after the service (Berry, 1995; Grönroos, 1988), which highlights the importance of trust. In a service process such as visiting a museum, or communicating with a museum online, a customer might not be able to assess the artistic quality of the exhibition, or the information validity, even after experiencing it. This is why customers need to trust the museum to present them with only relevant artworks or information, for example. Customers that trust their service providers have good reasons to remain in the relationship with the provider, as relationships reduce uncertainty and vulnerability (Berry, 1995). What is crucial 23
to understand in service organizations, is that the interactions customers experience with the staff, and the organization as a whole, in the service encounter affect how they perceive the quality of the service, at least as much as the service itself (Gummesson, 1987). Customers are likely to asses the quality of a museum in, at least, three ways: 1) the perceived quality of the artworks themselves, 2) the quality of interactions with the staff of the organization, and 3) the quality of the physical environment (Passebois & Aurier, 2004). Rentschler and Gilmore (2002) added Programmes and Accessibility to the list of museum service dimensions, which naturally also are assessed by customers. With programmes they refer to research, conservation of the artworks, sholarships and for example management of the collections in general. Accessibility incorporates the availability of the ‘product’, the museum premises, and the ‘story’ the museum is communicating to the customers. Grönroos (1988) created a somewhat different list of service quality criteria. It entailes the same issues than the other lists, merely under different names, but according to that also trustworhiness, recovery, and reputation affect the perceived quality. Trustworthiness in this case refers to customers knowing that the organization keeps the promises they have made and strives to perform as well as possible. Recovery means that in case something unexpected should happen in the service process, the organization providing the service would immediately take action to correct the situation. Reputation, logcally, means that an organization can be trusted to stand for good values that the customers can also share. (Grönroos, 1988). Picture 3 combines the above listed dimensions affecting perceived quality by the customers in a museum context. The dimensions in Picture 3 are arranged in a continuum of intangible to tangible issues. Intangible - Tangible The actual museum building (or online presence) The artworks Programmes Accessibility Interactions, communication with the staff Trustworthiness, reputation and recovery Perceived QUALITY Picture 4: Perceived quality (based on Passebois & Aurier, 2004; Rentschler and Gilmore 2002; and Grönroos 1988). 24
Page 1 and 2: Is there more to it than posting a
Page 3 and 4: Tiivistelmä Tämä tutkimus osalli
Page 5 and 6: 5 FINDINGS OF THE RESEARCH ........
Page 7 and 8: 1 INTRODUCTION “Winning and keepi
Page 9 and 10: museums, are expected to outperform
Page 11 and 12: 1.1 Research questions and structur
Page 13 and 14: & Levy (1969) defined it, it is jus
Page 15 and 16: profit, and governmental. Each of t
Page 17 and 18: and the consumer of a service are t
Page 19 and 20: 3 THEORY: RELATIONSHIP WITH THE CUS
Page 21 and 22: 3.2.1 A mindset for customer relati
Page 23: depends on the customer and industr
Page 27 and 28: fact that a service is created at t
Page 29 and 30: RM, however, is not a new phenomeno
Page 31 and 32: step to creating a relationship. Wi
Page 33 and 34: 25). When the clientele of an organ
Page 35 and 36: all problems, for example, also in
Page 37 and 38: Traditionally customers have seen t
Page 39 and 40: entire process of co-creation of va
Page 41 and 42: messages received by the customers
Page 43 and 44: confused with the technology behind
Page 45 and 46: engage with the organization in soc
Page 47 and 48: media in an organization, and thus
Page 49 and 50: 3.5.1 Social media applications Soc
Page 51 and 52: & Leighton 2011). Kozinets et al. (
Page 53 and 54: approximately 30 percent of the use
Page 55 and 56: developed for the function of filte
Page 57 and 58: important, what will it give to the
Page 59 and 60: 4 METHODOLOGY In order to find out
Page 61 and 62: interviews, instead of unstructured
Page 63 and 64: The methods used for data collectio
Page 65 and 66: with regard to the number of organi
Page 67 and 68: collections, the museums spent 2,8
Page 69 and 70: using the internet, but also they a
Page 71 and 72: Registered as a user in a social ne
Page 73 and 74: does what, at least almost on case
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wise to consider the style of writi
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there is or how to behave, or what
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Even though a few museums seemed to
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…There, in the online world a mus
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sized museum had, not only customer
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We don’t know whether people from
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Yes, you could day the experience i
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inquired on whether different conte
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6 DISCUSSION In this chapter the fi
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Another concern the museums pointed
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utilization, would be clear to them
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7 CONCLUSIONS In this chapter a dis
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that even when people do arrive int
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large-scale interactions with exter
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8 REFERENCES Alasuutari, P. Laadull
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Conway Tony & Debra Leighton. ”Co
Page 107 and 108:
Grönroos Christian. ”Service Qua
Page 109 and 110:
McDaniel Clay. ”3 Key Metrics To
Page 111 and 112:
Passebois Juliette & Philippe Aurie
Page 113 and 114:
Sorav Jain. ”40 Most Popular Soci
Page 115 and 116:
APPENDIX 1: List of Finnish art mus
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