Arts Marketing: The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Products development

Technically the product is a service for the consumer, the Met museums are selling an experience, excluding the gift shop.

As they are selling an experience, the product development of that would have to be how the overall collection has grown over time, resulting in a more educated experience for the consumer.

There has been increased demand each year for the Met service, in terms of visitors, alas donations have decreased. Opening hours have been extended over time too, to fulfil the increased footfall and tourist traffic and visitors.

In terms of competitors the service the Met provides is exceptional, a huge space without being crowded in New York, to consume this abundance of art from all over the world in all historic periods in one place. There is no competition in that aspect. The Met museum could enhance the experience and service it provides by improving their collection of works, which they do steadily each year.

Price

Price is an issue that has previously been discussed, even in the introduction, as it did provide quite a reaction from the press when the policy changed.

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The Met museum is a non-profit organisation, by definition, but they do not allow free admission anymore. The current rate for a ticket is $25 dollars to non-locals and free to locals, New Yorkers. This is so the Met museum can keep on running via this funding, in terms of rent, expenses, staff wages, collecting new works and pieces, keeping the exhibitions and artwork clean and up to date, to even security systems as some displayed artwork is worth millions.

Place

As previously stated, location wise it has always been in the same iconic fifth avenue building on the upper east side, next to central park. And the two other location Met bruer and Met cloisters. There is potential for the Met to expand overseas like other international museums like the louvre and Guggenheim are doing in the Arab markets or china and other emerging economies such as Bric economies etc.

There is a gift shop located in JFK airport which is a good marketing technique, as they recognised how many of their visitors are tourists visiting their city and have exploited a good opportunity to create sales via footfall and consumers recognising the brand (whilst simultaneously probably have a few hours to keep busy waiting for a flight).

Promotion

The Met museum website is used as a promotional tool, it is interactive for potential visitors but in this day and age there are many more things the website could integrate and include as part of a promotional tactic. Currently they feature many articles about art and other general things, the only interactive thing online seems to be the #MetKids Blog that includes the digital feature which was interactive. The blog itself is not interactive, there are not ques of how the reader/ customer could join in next time at this date or take part or get involved in some way. Just a mention of visiting next time, nothing specific targeting anyone from any background.

The Met gala is a promoting technique, the event itself, held the first Monday of May each year to raise funds for the costume institute at the Met. Art was considered to include painting, architecture and sculpture, everything else was decorative arts therefore whether fashion belongs in a museum, one especially as well regarded as the Met, was a controversial issue. The gala supports the operating budget for the entire year, around $120 mill has been donated to the museum. With a mixture of high and low culture (cross fertilise), the Met gala gives the opportunity to open the Met museum to new audiences that otherwise would not have been exposed to not just the Met museum but the elite art world in general.

Communication Integration

Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) ensures that all forms of communications and messages are working cohesively (Kerr et al., 2008). The Met outsource their marketing with the firm Laplacohen, they have been doing this for 25 years. The firm are partners of The Met and handle crucial aspects of their advertising and campaign needs, from design and ad production to strategy and media planning (Laplacacohen, 2019). However, overall all the communication and marketing methods the Met produce, unfortunately do not seem to work together.

Works cited

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2. LaPlaca Cohen. (2019). Case study: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Retrieved from https://www.laplacacohen.com/case-study-the-metropolitan-museum-of-art/
3. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. (n.d.). About the Met. Retrieved from https://www.metmuseum.org/about-the-met
4. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. (n.d.). The Met Gala. Retrieved from https://www.metmuseum.org/about-the-met/curatorial-departments/the-costume-institute/the-met-gala
5. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. (n.d.). Visit. Retrieved from https://www.metmuseum.org/visit
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8. Rosenbaum, L. (2018). The Metropolitan Museum of Art lays off employees and cuts costs amid budget deficit. Artnews. Retrieved from https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/metropolitan-museum-art-lays-off-employees-cuts-costs-budget-deficit-11133/
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