These environment is broadly classified into micro and macro environment and the following sections illustrates some of the micro and macro environmental factors affecting the performance of Gordon highlanders museum (GHM)
2.1 Micro environment:
These are the factors internal to the organisation and in case of Gordon highlanders these important factors would be competition, accounting, customer market and publics etc.
Competitors:
Competitors to GHM are The Maritime Museum, Aberdeen Art Gallery and Provost Skene’s House. Entry fee is free in case of few of these competitors and are open throughout the year as compared to Gordon highlanders, which remains closed from November to March of every year. Also, in case of other museum there is a scope of participation, for example, the art Gallery provides a platform for new and emerging artists and hosts an active programme of special exhibitions and events throughout (Source: Information Britain). This becomes an important factor for promotion, where as in case of GHM, there cannot be such participation from individuals, since the museum is all about the highlander’s regiment and war history, only the themes can be changed often to attract more visitors and the only participation would be the handling area provided by the museum. On the other hand GHM is situated in a calm & quiet area and apart from the display section GHM has a tea room and garden which could attract a lot of youngsters & families looking out for leisure activities.
Accounting:
Accounting would be another important aspect as part of the micro environment of Gordon highlanders. The museum works with a very basic accounting system without much evaluation on various departments within the organisation. For example, the museum runs a tea room, which is a integral part of the museum and is an import source of revenue generation with a clientele of its own. But the accounting and profitability of this tea room is not measured appropriately. An implementation of a good accounting system would assist in evaluating the costs & profitability of the tea room, which is frequented by regular customers and sometimes the only reason for visits.
Customer market:
There is a little formal research carried out by GHM to understand and identify the customer market or client base. It would be necessary to prepare questionnaires and handover to each of the client visiting the museum to get a better understanding of visitor’s background and purpose of visit enabling the museum to take appropriate measures to encourage more visits. With the presence of many schools & universities in Aberdeen GHM has a potential to target the local and international students. The entree fee being minimal, students wouldn’t think much before visiting the museum provided the awareness is generated.
Publics:
There are various types of publics surrounding an organisation like the media publics, local publics, general publics and internal publics etc. GHM can concentrate on these publics. A better media coverage especially newspaper and radio would assist GHM to get a good mileage in terms of marketing.
2.2 Macro environment:
Macro environment refers to political environment, demographics, culture and technology, which would affect the performance of an organisation and few of these factors are analysed below with regard to GHM.
Political factors:
Political factors affecting GHM would be government’s role in promotion of tourism. And there are organisations like “The Museums Association” which was established to represent the interests of museum and galleries as institutions (Keynote, 2003). It is dedicated to promote best practice in all areas of museum work and supportive working practices through the exchange of information and ideas. It sets guidelines for balancing the interests of museums, their employees and the public. This is a positive factor favouring GHM.
Demographics:
Demographics are important factors affecting the performance of the museum. These factors could be occupation, age and education of individuals. UK statistics on demographics indicates that the population is aging (Source: The Economics of health care) and this might be an advantage to GHM since most of the visitors are adults and senior citizens.
Technology:
Technology evolutions like on-line virtual museums enable people to access museums directly from anywhere in the world via an Internet connection. Though the facilities on-line are different and not of the same quality as the real museum itself. This can be viewed as favourable trend in case of GHM especially with respect to tourists who make an initial assessment of places to be visited. Technology can also be a threat where people have access to huge information resource via the internet and visiting the museum physically might be viewed as futile.
More of virtual slides of the regiment history, garden and tea rooms would be quite encouraging for the local leisure visitors.
Culture and its implications:
Changing culture will have an impact on the number of visitors to the museum. Influence of television, internet and choice of leisure activities like pubs will be the key factors. Since, most of the visitors to the GHM are adults and school children, change in cultural values and belief system will have an impact and it becomes important for GHM to develop appropriate marketing literatures for the target audience.
3.0 Market segmentation & targeting:
Market segmentation refers to dividing the market into distinct groups of buyers which might require separate products or marketing mixes (P. Kotler, 1991).Hence a differentiated marketing strategy will have to be adopted by an organisation and design separate offers for each.
There are various criteria which can be applied for segmenting a market for a museum. For example, geographic, demographic, behavioural, and psychographic segmentation
Geographic segmentation:
- Local visitors
- Visitors from rest of the Scotland
- Visitors from rest of the UK
- International visitors
Demographic segmentation using age, occupation & education as segmentation variables:
- Age: Under 6-11, 12-19, 20-34, 35-49, 50-64, 65+
- Occupation: Professional and technical, managers, sales, foremen, students, housewives, retired, unemployed etc.
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Education: Grade school or less, high school graduate, college graduate etc.
Behavioural segmentation can also be done using the variables like benefits and attitudes.
Psychographic segmentation would be based on lifestyles, social class and personality
However, in case of GHM, the market can be segmented demographically using occupation as the key segmentation variable. People within the same demographic group can exhibit different psychographic profiles and hence it becomes vital to also consider these trends.
Depending on the occupation the market can be segmented to students or researches, corporates, adults or senior citizens. GHM has limited resources and hence demographic segmentation would be easier in terms of measuring the size and formulating actions for attracting and serving these segments.
As far as the museum or the display area is concerned, GHM is capable of developing various educational programmes, workshops and cover a number of themes and hence the display area can be considered as a product which can be targeted to a certain market segment i.e students and researchers.
Tea room and garden can be promoted as another product from GHM targeting senior citizens or adults looking out for leisure activities.
Corporate hospitality and social events can be viewed as separate product targeting the corporate segment.
Thus market for GHM becomes differentiated with attractiveness of each of these products appealing different segments. It becomes vital to develop and design different programmes for each of these segments.
4.0 Consumer decision making:
It is important to analyse consumer behaviour and identify factors which influence customers to make buying decision. In case of GHM, the target customers are identified and being segmented into various groups like corporate, students, senior citizens etc.
In this section, consumer or visitor’s behaviour would be analysed in various segment, identifying the decision maker or the decision making unit which makes people visit Gordon highlanders’ museum.
Students:
GHM has a number of artifacts and stories of the highlanders regiment and world war-11. This is of interest to school children and becomes part of their curriculum. Hence, GHM can be a platform to know more of history and physically see the medals, weapons and uniforms of soldiers along with their history. The handling area at the museum is another feature appealing to the school children.
In case of students the initiator would be the school curriculum and the teachers, who would want students to visit the museum and learn more of history and epics of war, making the visit more of fun as well as effective learning in terms of interactive sessions, trying out things at the handling area and at the end of it all using the garden for relaxation. Family in this case becomes the reference groups influencing kids to visit the museum.
Senior citizens:
These can be the people who are either deeply connected with the regiment or other elders looking out for leisure activities. The UK demography as discussed in the macro environment is shifting towards aging population and hence it’s essential to target and design offers for this segment. Also, people connected with the regiment or retired soldiers would easily be encouraged to visit the museum.
The influencing factors in this segment would be the personality factors like lifestyle, and age. People staying within the vicinity of GHM would prefer dropping into the highlanders tea room or use the garden for relaxation. And they would do this on a regular basis. This can be attributed to “Habitual Buying Behaviour”
Corporate:
The Museum offers a historical and exciting setting for the complete range of corporate hospitality from dinners, conferences, board meetings and cocktail parties to receptions, buffet suppers and celebratory luncheons, all of which guests can enjoy in an unusual and impressive atmosphere amidst regimental treasures collected over two centuries(Gordon highlanders museum, 2003). Corporates can be encouraged more to conduct small gatherings and luncheon thus making way for more revenue.
The factors influencing this segment to make buying decision would be the social class and personality. A strong correlation exits between personality types and product or brand choices (P. Kotler, 1991). Hence corporates would view GHM has a brand and organising meeting, dinners or celebrity luncheons amidst the regimental treasures would be a symbol of class.
General public:
This segment would include the general public like the families in Aberdeen and tourists (day-trippers) who seek leisure activities and would opt to visit GHM. Apart from the history of the regiment and artefacts, the garden and the tea room would be more appealing to this segment.
“Variety-Seeking Buying Behaviour” would be one of the criteria influencing this segment to visit GHM.
5.0 Conclusion:
It can be concluded that Gordon highlanders museum has a potential to attract more visitors and from the market evaluation it is quite evident that the performance is affected by competition, demographics and other external factors. But with appropriate market segmentation and targeting GHM can offer different products to various segments and also develop various marketing strategies to encourage and promote the right audience to visit the museum.
6.0 References:
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Gordon Highlanders Museum(2003) “Corporate and Social Events” [WWW] http://www.gordonhighlanders.com/home.cfm?p=corporate
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Information Britain “Aberdeen Art Gallery”
[WWW] http://www.information-britain.co.uk/showPlace.cfm?Place_ID=1899
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Keynote(2003) 1st ed. “Local government Services” edited by Lynsey Barker
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P. Kotler(1991) 7th ed. “ Marketing management” , Prentice-Hall International editions
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The Economics of health care “The aging UK population”
[WWW] http://www.oheschools.org/ohech6pg3.html
