Understanding the arts customer: the mistake of overlooking customer experience

Arts organizations have been traditionally focused on product orientation aimimg to offer a high quality programming. However, market orientation has been mostly neglected. In other words, consumers have been partially considered by some in their marketing strategies design. In general, organizations have undertaken basic segmentation, selection, positioining and differentiation strategies without focusing on consumer experience. Consumption of arts is mainly experiential. This experience, result of a consumer journey, is both multidimensional, as it refers to cognitive, affective, physical, sensory and social elements, and subjective, because of being personal. The final aim for people is escaping from daily routine while being immersed in the consumption of artistic product and services. This aspect has been considered in experiential marketing approaches with the aim to create contexts in which consumers immerse themselves. Literature in this context has presented models to stimulate the senses and imaginations of people. But the artistic experience requires being able to attract consumers thanks to innovative proposals, and then facilitating a progressive appropriation resulting in a process of co-creation in which the experiential context and activity of the consumer play together.