Consulting in Practice Case Study

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Introduction - Enhancing Museum Marketing Strategies

Consulting in practice refers to the process of recommending expert solutions to professionals in business and financial fields. Wycombe Museum is a free local museum located in the town of High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, England. It is a Grade II listed house with a 1.2-acre tree-lined garden and a Scheduled Ancient Monument motte. This present report, prepared with expert assignment writing help, will outline the problems faced by the museum and provide effective solutions for overcoming and addressing these issues. To evaluate the solutions, the report will consider elements such as competitive analysis, target market analysis, and other strategic tools.

Problem Statement

Context of company and its industry

Wycombe Museum have an on-site café as well as surrounded by a large beautiful garden, it is controlled and manage by the Wycombe Heritage and Arts Trust. The main goal of the Museum is financial independence needs to be implanted within the local community. Wycombe is located between two wards of conflicting economic growth. High Wycombe Buckinghamshire town have a young and age profile, ethnically population, in urban are 99 % population live and 25% without qualification (About Wycombe Museum, 2024). Generally, the resident has a lack interest in their community.

Consulting in Practice Case Study

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Michael White 9 Years | PhD

The Wycombe Museum is suffers from various issues such as lack of business awareness of the museum. The local community and business have lack of awareness about a museum like what it offered for the visitors, which is a major problem,

Lack of collaboration and efficient team is another problem, the museum have lack of volunteers to manage the activities of museum as well increasing the funding for enhancing awareness.

Research

Product understanding

Wycombe museum offers collection such as local arts, historic objects as well as furniture making history and various different artifacts that demonstrates area`s rich social history (Gladston and Howarth-Gladston, 2023).

Primary Research

With the help of primary research method and conducting interview with the potential audience it is evaluated that there is lack of awareness among the audience about museum due to lack of social media marketing. The museum not focus on promoting it museum via the help of social media marketing which is best source for increasing awareness in current time. According to the primary research, the museum authority should focus on using social media platform to increase awareness of the museum in local communities, attracting more volunteers and partners to for collaboration to raising funds. On the other hand, it is identified that customer mostly prefer to use social media platform Instagram, thus for Wycombe museum best to use Instagram to increase awareness, collaboration and supporting local businesses.

Secondary Research

Market dynamics

It refers to the forces that impact the performance and behavior of market. To evaluate market dynamics of the Wycombe museum, PEST analysis used:

• Political Factor: It includes factors like government rules, regulation and policies. The changes in the policies of government funding and allocation lead to impact the financial stability of museum which can aid in increasing awareness (Do Thi et al, 2021). In addition, rules of government related to maintenance and security of historic articles impacts the goodwill and brand of the museum. It is important for the organization to follow all rules and regulations while operating museum.
• Economical factor: It includes factor such as inflation, rate of interest, economic situation and so more. During the time of economic slowdown, people purchasing power decline as a result, rate of visitor declines which impacts awareness factor of Wycombe. Moreover, the increase in the inflation rate unable the community to visit the place as a result the awareness of the museum impacted in significant manner.
• Social factor: It includes customer behavior, demographic preference and so more. Currently, young population`s interest is increase in explore the rich culture as a result demand for visiting museum is increasing.
• Technological factor: In time of digitalization, role of technical tool increase such as use of social media, artificial intelligence to grab the attention of local community and visitor as well as increasing awareness of museum. The company use technologies to grab the attention of visitors as well as digital tool for the purpose of marketing leads to aids in increase more footprints.

Competitive insights

Porter`s five forces used to recognize and evaluate the competitive forces within the industry.

• Competitive Rivalry: There is high competitive rivalry within the industry as there is other big museum located such as British Museum, Victoria and Albert Museum, National Gallery and so more. High competition is considered as a barrier in increasing awareness of Wycombe museum.
• Threat of new entrants to industry: There is lack of threat of new entrants as there is high cost of setting museums as a result require large amount of capital. On the other hand, to enter museum industry, requires various legal formalities correspondingly threat of new entrants is less.
• Bargaining power of Supplier: In the context of museum industry, there is less power of supplier. Wycombe museum provides free access to customer to enter and explore the museum .
• Bargaining Power of Buyer: The bargaining power of customers is more as there are various options available to them to explore the rich history, In addition, there is less or no cost of switching as a result bargaining power of supplier is high.
• Threat of substitute: Within the museum industry, there is high threat of substitute as there are various museums that offer services of exploring rich culture and history of England. For example British Museum and Wycombe museum both offered free services, thus customer can easily switch.

Solutions

The problem of lack of awareness within local community as well as lack of collaboration and efficient volunteer team can be overcome by the use of target market analysis as well as with the help of 4 P`s of marketing.

Target market

Target market refers to a group of customers that are recognized as a most likely purchaser of a product or services of a company. The identification of the target market is essential in the development as well as execution of the successful marketing plan. In the context of Wycombe museum, the target market analysis aids in identifying ways to increasing awareness as well as grabbing efficient team members.

With the help of the primary and secondary research, it is identified that in the digitalization era, the use of the social media increasing rapidly. It is the fastest and best way to communicate with the target audience as all age group people whether adult, young, children remain engaged with the social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, LikedIn and so more. Through the primary research , it is evaluated that major amount of target audience use social media platform Instagram as a result to increase awareness, Wycombe museum recommended to use Instagram to market its products and services.

The target audience of the museum is people interested in local history, tourists, families as well as school and college students (Kanjilal and Pearson, 2020). The museum can use several ways to increase awareness and collaboration with different NGO`s, institute, government departments. These are as under:

• Building social media campaigns: To increase the awareness, responsible authority build a social media campaign that effectively communicate about the museum`s artifacts, history which is helpful in attracting more visitors, volunteers as well as in increasing awareness of the museum. In addition, the marketing team of the museum must organize a quiz in which relevant questions asked on Instagram, it leads to help in promote and communicate about the museum to more people, leads to assist in increase awareness (Zollo et al, 2022).
• Encourage visitor to get social: To increase awareness, collaboration and attract more volunteers museum should motivate the visitors to share their experience and what they saw within the museum with friends by taking snap selfies and sharing museum online content. It is the best way to increase awareness of the museum, it helps in giving more information to customers about museum.
• Hosting immersive events: To enhance awareness and increase collaboration with the other reputed organization, museum should organize immersive events such as interactive art exhibitions, events for local businesses, offering free vouchers for special services and so more (Yin, 2020). The museum should collaborate with schools authority so that children of the England, able to know about the history correspondingly local communities able to aware about the museum.
• Influence marketing: To increase the awareness, museum should partner with the influencer who have a large as well as global following can aids in increasing number of people visiting museum (Amanatidis et al, 2020 ). For this, Wycombe museum can work with the travel bloggers, art enthusiasts and parent blogger. In addition, museum can provide discounts codes to influencer so that they share with the their followers. It leads to help in increase awareness as well as attract target audience from all age group in efficient manner.

All this solution aids in grabbing more visitors, volunteers as well partners for the purpose of collaboration assist in overcoming the problem of lack of awareness, volunteers and fund raising. In addition, when number of visitor towards the museum increase, it leads to increase the number of customers for the local businesses too. Thus, via use of the solution museum can empower local businesses as well as enable to increase awareness.

7 P`s of marketing

Wycombe Museum can also use 7 P`s of marketing to overcome its problem in the effective manner. 7 P`s of marketing is a combination of elements that is used by company to promote its product and services as well as build a effective marketing strategy.

• Product- The museum offers several products and services to visitors such as local arts, furniture’s exhibition, historic objects that represent the rich history of the place (Janík, and Češek, 2020). It leads to attract the individual who have curiosity to know new things as well as history and culture.
• Price- The museum charges no price for visiting the place. Entry to the museum as well as grounds is free of charge, also various activities for children such as trails and interactive old kitchen. This marketing strategy of the company aids in gain attention of more visitors as well as voluntary participates. The marketing strategy is effective for increasing awareness and solving the concerned problem of the organization.
• Place: The museum offers its services via its offline location at the High Wycombe Buckinghamshire, England. Customers can reach the place easily and explore the rich art, culture and history. It is easily accessible as various public transports are available.
• Promotion: To promote the museum and to enhance the awareness the museum can use social media, influence marketing to grab the attention of customers as well as to increase the awareness of museum. It build social media campaigns, organize various events for all age group people as well as collaborate with the NGO`s and other public organization to increase funds, support local businesses and embrace more collection (Ebbers, Leenders, and Augustijn, 2021). To increase awareness organization can partnering with reputed influencers with more followers who associated with the culture and history of the England, as most of people influence by the social media influencer they follow on the social media. In addition, organization by sponsor or collaborate with other non-profit, welfare organization can get a chance to attract more volunteers to manage and control the activities. The awareness and organization of events aids in raising funds as well as attracting more visitors and local communities so that able to support and promote the local businesses.
• People- Wycombe museum has a efficient team includes volunteers, marketing team and so more. The volunteers of the of the museum are insightful, aware about the facts as well as have knowledge about the artifacts. The effectively manage all artifacts and provide information to visitors, It leads to aids in enhancing awareness and attracting more visitors.
• Process- Efficient team of the Wycombe museum use effective management process for managing all artifacts so that effectively able to satisfied customers requirements and preference.
• Physical evidence-Wycombe museum physical evidence includes museum`s user-friendly website that attracts visitors through online platform. Additionally, physical location of museum, its artifacts, historic chairs and furniture, all are its physical evidence.

This 7 Ps of marketing mix solution leads to help in overcome the problem in the best and proficient manner.

Outcomes

The above solution helps in bring positive outcome for the Wycombe museum as it helpful in overcoming the problem faced by the company.

• Increasing awareness: The museum now focuses on building effective campaign keeping in mind the requirements of the target audience and their preference of using social media platforms (Mason, Narcum, and Mason, 2021). It communicate message using the language which is easily understand by everyone. Currently as the customer prefer to use more of Instagram as a result the museum able to attract more visitors as well as increase awareness of the product and services.
• Increasing Collaboration: The collaboration or partnership with the different NGO`s, public department, Hertiage committees and other institution aids in organize different events related to promoting culture, art and history aids in increase more people within the organization to effectively manage the activities of the museum. The outcome of the solution assists in attract more volunteer as a result help in smoothing the work as well as organize more events for the purpose of sharing knowledge, support local businesses and raising funds in proficient and successful manner.
• Attracting more visitors: Marketing is crucial for the promoting awareness as museum is not just a place to represent objects, it is a place to learn as well as explore. The promotion and organization of educational programs and events aids in engage more local community, support to local businesses as well as furnishing better understanding of culture and history (Fernandez-Lores, Crespo-Tejero and Fernández-Hernández, 2022). Thus, aids in attract more visitors.

Handover

Wycombe Museum while increasing awareness of museum via help of social media must consider following points such as:

• It is recommended to museum to use clear and correct language according to the understanding of the local communities and visitors so that effectively able to communicate about its product and services and awareness about museum (Blakeman, 2023.).
• It is advised to the organization to make partnership with the influencer who is relevant to the brand. For example, partnering with the influencer who is responsible towards culture, art and history helps in enhance more awareness.

Conclusion

As expressed, consulting practice is useful in getting expert solution. The present report sated about the problems of lack of awareness in local communities, lack of collaboration and volunteers within the Wycombe museum. The present study outlined primary and secondary research and express solution to overcome the problems such as building social media campaign on Instagram, collaborating with influencer and organizing events. The outcome of solution aids in increasing awareness, visitors and promoting local businesses. It highlighted that while marketing organization must use clear language and collaborate with right influencer.

References

Books and Journals

• Amanatidis, D., Mylona, I., Mamalis, S. and Kamenidou, I.E., 2020. Social media for cultural communication: A critical investigation of museums’ Instagram practices. Journal of Tourism, Heritage & Services Marketing (JTHSM), 6(2), pp.38-44.
• Blakeman, R., 2023. Integrated marketing communication: creative strategy from idea to implementation. Rowman & Littlefield.
• Do Thi, H.T., Pasztor, T., Fozer, D., Manenti, F. and Toth, A.J., 2021. Comparison of desalination technologies using renewable energy sources with life cycle, PESTLE, and multi-criteria decision analyses. Water, 13(21), p.3023.
• Ebbers, J.J., Leenders, M.A. and Augustijn, J.J., 2021. Relationship value benefits of membership programs, heterogeneous stakeholders and museum impact beyond fees. European Management Review, 18(4), pp.418-432.
• Fernandez-Lores, S., Crespo-Tejero, N. and Fernández-Hernández, R., 2022. Driving traffic to the museum: The role of the digital communication tools. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 174, p.121273.
• Gladston, P. and Howarth-Gladston, L., 2023. Tasmania’s Museum of Old and New Art and the Intertextual Traces of English Romanticism. Journal of Curatorial Studies, 12(1), pp.48-79.
• Janík, M.Z. and Češek, T., How England Preserves its Cultural Heritage.
• March, O., 2020 ‘e Art of Playing it has never Died Out in this Country’: Abel’s Competitors, Followers and Successors.
• Mason, A.N., Narcum, J. and Mason, K., 2021. Social media marketing gains importance after Covid-19. Cogent Business & Management, 8(1), p.1870797.
• Yin, L., 2020. Museums and marketing: a controversy over new strategies. Esic Market Economics and Business Journal, 51(1), pp.183-208.
• Zollo, L., Rialti, R., Marrucci, A. and Ciappei, C., 2022. How do museums foster loyalty in tech-savvy visitors? The role of social media and digital experience. Current Issues in Tourism, 25(18), pp.2991-3008.

Online

• About Wycombe Museum. 2024.Online. Available through: < https://wycombemuseum.org.uk/#:~:text=About%20Wycombe%20Museum&text=Wycombe%20Museum%20is%20housed%20in,Wycombe%20Heritage%20and%20Arts%20Trust.>