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the biggest ones collect information on the customers online in total. As today the collection of information on one’s customers, especially online, is rather effortless, it is relevant to ask why the museums do not do this. Could this be a remain of the product oriented way of thinking that used to be how museums saw their actions? Nevertheless, this is something the museums could easily improve with the help of free or affordable software, analyzing the data collected, and then acting on it. Further, social media has not been utilized for educative purposes within the museums. The only museum that had planned something that would combine education and online presence was the one museum that is not in social media, at least not yet. Building a historically correct city in a virtual world and inviting students to familiarize themselves with it was one of the most innovative ideas that arose from the discussions with the informants. Social media offers great tools for video sharing, picture sharing, slideshow sharing, and voice record sharing that could be utilized for educational purposes by the pedagogical services of museums. Overall, the findings, by far, confirmed the proposed issues of relationship marketing in social media (chapter 3 section5). The informants were aware of most of the issues covered in the theory of the present research, but for some reason they do not carry out the listed issues, such as the social media strategy or the appropriate style of communication in the different applications, not to mention the measuring of the effects of their social media activities. It would seem as though they do not really trust their customers, or fans, to be active co-creators of the experiences. The museums appear to be in a stage where their employees realize, at least to some extent, the possibilities of social media, but they are unable to conduct their social media presence, as they would want it to be, referring to their limited resources. 95
7 CONCLUSIONS In this chapter a discussion on the theory and the findings concludes the present research. In chapter one, Introduction, the following research question was proposed, “What are the specific characteristics of building customer relationships utilizing social media, in the context of art museums?” and the following supporting questions: “Why would a cultural organization, such as a museum, focus on building customer relationships?” and “How do art museums utilize social media in their marketing actions?”. These questions are answered in this chapter. The present research finds, that the characteristics of building and maintaining relationships with the customers, in the special setting of social media, are the selecting of the appropriate applications, the way of communication, context specific content, mutual trust, and perhaps most importantly the willingness for the relationship. It is also important to plan the actions ahead, to create a strategy and guidelines for the online behavior, and also evaluate the actions as they are done in order to know what worked well and what requires rethinking. The willingness for a relationship, from the organization’s viewpoint, has to do with taking the customer into the museum processes. It is embracing the customer orientation, and co- creating value with the customers. It is not something that can be added to the marketing mix; rather it is a philosophy through which the employees of the museum need to understand the entire process of the visit or online engagement. Including the customers does not mean that customers themselves should take part in the strategic decision-making, or have an affect on the artistic processes at the museum, only that the employees of the museum need to think about the services they provide also from the viewpoint of the customers. Co-creation of value means that both sides benefit from the relationship, thus it should not only be giving to the customers, but also expecting them to act together with the museum. In the future, the museums need to really step up their game in the experience thinking, and even more so in actualizing it. The experience thinking may be “popular” in museums at the moment, but it does take years to convince every employee of the organization of the ideas of customer orientation, “part-time marketers” (Gummesson1987, 16), or staff-visitor relationships (Rentschler & Gilmore, 2002). The selection of the appropriate social media applications is important, as even though social media users are easily described as a homogeneous group, they are in fact a rather versatile 96
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Is there more to it than posting a
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Tiivistelmä Tämä tutkimus osalli
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5 FINDINGS OF THE RESEARCH ........
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1 INTRODUCTION “Winning and keepi
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museums, are expected to outperform
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1.1 Research questions and structur
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& Levy (1969) defined it, it is jus
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profit, and governmental. Each of t
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and the consumer of a service are t
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3 THEORY: RELATIONSHIP WITH THE CUS
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3.2.1 A mindset for customer relati
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depends on the customer and industr
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to understand in service organizati
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fact that a service is created at t
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RM, however, is not a new phenomeno
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step to creating a relationship. Wi
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25). When the clientele of an organ
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all problems, for example, also in
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Traditionally customers have seen t
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entire process of co-creation of va
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messages received by the customers
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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
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Page 71 and 72: Registered as a user in a social ne
Page 73 and 74: does what, at least almost on case
Page 75 and 76: wise to consider the style of writi
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Page 79 and 80: Even though a few museums seemed to
Page 81 and 82: …There, in the online world a mus
Page 83 and 84: sized museum had, not only customer
Page 85 and 86: We don’t know whether people from
Page 87 and 88: Yes, you could day the experience i
Page 89 and 90: inquired on whether different conte
Page 91 and 92: 6 DISCUSSION In this chapter the fi
Page 93 and 94: Another concern the museums pointed
Page 95: utilization, would be clear to them
Page 99 and 100: that even when people do arrive int
Page 101 and 102: large-scale interactions with exter
Page 103 and 104: 8 REFERENCES Alasuutari, P. Laadull
Page 105 and 106: 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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