Moreover, with the 7 days a week schedule, these four visits could be done by any person regardless the flexibility of his/her timetable, especially by the free admission feature. And one can see that starting 1998, the total museum attendance has made a remarkable rise, it might be related to the new blocks opened at that period. Yet the presence of visitors in special exhibitions did also improve through the years but never above average of the total attendance.
Internal functions of the museum are divided into three:
- Collection and Exhibitions
- Development and Community Affairs
- Finance and Administration
These departments held for that point in time 185 employees and 475 volunteers.
The Board of Trustees had to make several projections which led that 2003 is not likely to bring no more than 1.6 million in county appropriations, low interest rates which will make investments remain flat or decline, fewer contributions than 2002 and less membership revenues. Yet there was a positive role for auxiliary activities which were intended to produce profit.
The museum image, as explained by the director and Ms. Mercer and based on their marketing research, reflected two images:
1- non-image at all
2- The museum is for specific people.
Therefore, this issue is a serious one, if people cannot find the museum interesting from the first place how would they want to visit it?
The museum offered different educational programs and special exhibitions, and made lots of effort in promotion especially through press relations and local media. Even though the attendance increases, yet the attendees would be non-MMA members. Nevertheless, such exposure helped in the annual membership solicitation.
Memberships provide the largest chare of the museum’s revenues. As they are divided into two categories, statistics showed that in 2002, personal memberships accounted almost 80% of membership revenue. Thus the market of the business consists mainly of personal membership more than corporate. Yet, the estimated cost of member benefits provided exceeded $ 1 million per year, and the principle costs items were:
a- free admissions to exhibits
b- Parking
c- Monthly calendar of museum’s activities
d- Discounts at the restaurant and gift shop.
Therefore actions are to be taken to either try to diminish these costs and find ways to increase personal as well as corporate memberships.
In addition, one cannot overlook the costs of the renewal and recruiting memberships, through two semi-annually mail solicitations which costs exceed about 70% of the total membership revenues without ignoring the fact that most of the 50$ members do not renew their membership after the first year.
All these facts yielded to a serious financial crisis, yet solution should be well planned and the museum shall be once again a winner.
Pate’s staff had some suggestions; they formulated some projections of the financial situation for 2003. Their suggestions came as follows:
- A 10% decrease in staff and administration would be a good push for salaries which are the main part in the expenses shown in the income statement exhibit 2.
- Contributions, grants, investment income, endowment earning would be 15% below 2002.
- Special Exhibitions and events would generate revenues of $1.2 million and cost $675.000 in 2003.
- Education programs’ expenditure was budgeted by $500,000
From the other side, Mercer’s staff opinions were from the marketing side of view, and they were as follows:
- Implementing and admission fee of $1.0
- Membership for student and senior citizens only for $30
- Enhance benefits for members.
An integrated plan should be planned by Pate and Mercer, which will include the previous point and also take into consideration new ways of the “know-how” to do business, whether on the marketing side or how to enhance the different activities in order to generate enough profit.
1- Innovative Marketing (Strategic Opportunity)
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Capitalize on the communications opportunities offered by the Internet, including:
- Better use of the Internet for information and promotion;
- create a fully searchable database
- Send emails instead of s-mails in order to decrease direct mails costs by at least 50%
- develop suggested ‘patterns’/ packages of things to do while visiting, and post these on the Internet;
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Ensure that the websites of tourism organizations are regularly updated to reflect existing facilities, services, pricing structures and events scheduled by the museum.
2- Increase client’s interest
- Preview customer needs and try to meet them
- Put more effort to attract corporate accounts
- Enhance Benefits for members – they say that a delighted customer is ready to pay more.
