Multidisciplinary perspectives on arts consumption and audience behaviour

Ben Walmsley (School of Performance and Cultural Industries, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK)
Laurie Meamber (School of Business, George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia, USA)

Arts and the Market

ISSN: 2056-4945

Article publication date: 8 May 2018

1372

Citation

Walmsley, B. and Meamber, L. (2018), "Multidisciplinary perspectives on arts consumption and audience behaviour", Arts and the Market, Vol. 8 No. 1, pp. 2-4. https://doi.org/10.1108/AAM-03-2018-0004

Publisher

:

Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2018, Emerald Publishing Limited


Multidisciplinary perspectives on arts consumption and audience behaviour

In our first editorial as co-editors, written for issue 7.1 of last year for Arts and the Market, we presented the revised aims and scope for this interdisciplinary journal. These aims and scope remain grounded in the values and aspirations that were at the core of the journal from the start. We highlighted the desire to continue the inclusive, creative, challenging, and cutting-edge nature of the work that appears in the journal, while expanding attention to research on audiences and consumers, including advancing research that focuses on the arts and related markets from the audience perspective. The tension at the core of Arts and the Market is the work that bridges, embraces, contests, and/or critiques the relationship between the arts and the market, and that also opens up possibilities for scholars and practitioners from around the world working in any number of fields to publish research that expands understanding of the arts and related markets. In that editorial, we also reviewed the high-quality pieces that had appeared in the journal to date broadly categorised under topics such as: visual arts and crafts museums, performing arts – music, theatre, opera; television (with film and cinema to come in future); literature and online content; and finally video – music-videos and videography. We not only encouraged additional submissions in these areas, but also to consider research that responds to the global interest in audience policy and research, the consumer experience, cultural and creative value, cultural tourism, among other issues.

The articles that appear in the 8.1 issue of Arts and the Market contribute to the development of knowledge across several of the requested domains, and in contexts not yet featured in prior issues, such as film and video games. In the 7.1 editorial, we also stated that we planned to foster submissions by authors and from perspectives from under-represented regions of the globe. Issue 8.1 is among the most inclusive to date based on authorship. Authors of the articles are affiliated with institutions located in Turkey, India, France, Belgium, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and USA. This current set of articles reflects the global nature and interests of academics and arts practitioners that find a welcoming community and outlet in Arts and the Market for their work. This is a positive trend that we are very eager to develop in the journal.

The first article in this issue is Zakia Obaidalahe and Nadia Steils’s “Motivation trajectory of attending performing arts: the role of knowledge”. In these times of significant competition for leisure time, complex audience behaviour and wavering organisational loyalty, this study provides some fresh insights into audiences’ motivations for engaging with the performing arts. For example, the study highlights how specific knowledge about a performance, general knowledge about an art form, and cultural capital more broadly provide a powerful stimulus for attendance and for ensuing appreciation and satisfaction. This Franco-Belgian study is based on interview with 20 audience members and three theatre professionals. The authors’ findings highlight the vital role of tailored audience communications in stimulating attendance from different audience segments but also underlines the important role of advocacy, education and mediation in audience development and cultural democratisation. These findings will prove useful not only to scholars of arts marketing and cultural policy studies, but also to practitioners working in marketing and audience development.

The second article in the issue addresses a significantly under-explored area of arts marketing. Anthony S. Rhine and Patrick M. Murnin’s “Day, duration and start time: are the arts providing what their audiences require?” investigates the impact of scheduling on audience attendance. Many papers have been written about the conundrum that lies at the very heart of arts marketing: namely, the age-old tension between product-led and consumer-led marketing. But few studies have thus far explored the impact of this tension in relation to scheduling. This particular contribution explores whether variations in factors such as start time, duration of event, and day of presentation might lead to improved attendance at performing arts events, in the context of the USA. Through a quantitative study of attendance preferences of performing arts audiences, the authors produce some interesting and sometimes counter-intuitive findings, particularly relating to the timing and durational preferences of different age groups. Although these findings raise some implicit concerns about the creeping instrumentalisation of artistic programming, they complement Obaidalahe and Steils’s piece nicely by offering further positive strategies for driving up attendance in the performing arts, especially amongst new and diverse audiences.

The third article in the issue also focuses on determinants of success for the performing arts, but approaches the question from a very different angle. Russell Thomas Warne’s “‘I hope I get it’: impact of Tony Award nominations and wins on Broadway production longevity” investigates the relative impact of different Tony Award nominations and wins on the box office performance of Broadway theatre productions. Warne’s study is the first to investigate all 22 Tony Award nominations and winners and trace the impact of this on the longevity of their subsequent Broadway runs and on their ultimate economic success. Given that apparently only around one in five Broadway musicals actually turn a profit, this kind of analysis provides a welcome addition to the relatively sparse academic literature on commercial theatre.

Continuing the theme of audience research but overlapping with cultural tourism and serious leisure, Markus Wohlfeil’s “Learning from the professionals: film tourists’ ‘authentic’ experiences on a film studio tour” presents an autoethnographic account of how film studio tourists consume and negotiate the (in)authenticity of guided film studio tours. While these tours are often conceptualised and critiqued as inauthentic, the tours provide consumers actual backstage access to filmmaking. These audiences also appear to have the opportunity to join a filmmaking community and to engage with the community of others that are often similar in terms of experience as amateur or hobby filmmakers. Nevertheless, contrary to extant scholarship on the concept of authenticity, the author finds that it is not the tour, but the experienced feeling of belonging is the actual inauthentic or simulacrum as there is no opportunity for these visitors to remain in the filmmaker community after leaving the tour through the gift shop. This result may also have implications that are worthy of further study in other arts contexts and implications for arts practice. As Wohlfeil suggests, arts audiences may seek opportunities beyond what is currently offered to seriously engage with art and heritage.

The second film-focused article shifts perspectives from audiences to the cultural production side, namely, the value of cultural intermediaries and gatekeepers in the movie industry. Roderik Smits’s “Tournaments of values at the European film market” is a case study that positions the European Film Market as tournaments of value. The Tournaments of Value Framework has been utilised in other contexts, but is particularly applicable to the discussion of value creation in arts markets, such as the global film market. As Smits suggests, film festivals and film markets offer multiple value creation opportunities. Allocations of space and physical arrangements, such as on-site and off-site venues for sales negotiations and deal making to take place, offer differing values for participants. Film screenings that occur at particular days and times facilitate exposure and the generation of positive buzz that will ascribe specific values to the sales agents and to the film, and will ultimately impact how the film will be distributed (and perhaps financed if not complete) all over the world. The findings of this study add to our understanding of the numerous ways that value can be created in the market for arts products.

Elif Ülker Demirel, Ayşe Akyol, and Gülhayat Gölbaşi Şimşek’s “Marketing and consumption of art products: the movie industry” examines important aspects of production, marketing, and of consumers and consumption of movies within an integrated model to explain purchase intentions and post-purchase behaviour. Using variables that have been developed in other studies, but have not yet been tested in an integrated framework via structural equation modelling, and including new data from Turkey, the results indicate that aspects of production (such as the cast), marketing (such as distribution channels) and consumer behaviour (such as frequency of attendance at cultural events) all appear to impact purchase intention. The authors suggest several implications of their work, including the importance of considering distribution channels that audiences prefer, as well as considering the preferences of frequent and infrequent attendees to develop strategies and messages that address them. This piece complements the work of the other articles on film appearing in this issue by addressing the entirety of the production-consumption model of the arts.

The final article in this issue deals with video games. Over the past decade, with the growth of gaming, scholars have framed and debated video games as art or an art form. As with serious leisure, arts scholars are now working on topics related to serious gaming – games that have a purpose other than or in addition to entertainment. The current piece, “Game-speed influence and brand attitude: mediating role of thought favourability in in-game advertising” by Devika Vashisht and HFO Surindar Mohan, focuses on in-game advertising. The results of this work add to our understanding of the impact of (brand) advertising in video games on brand attitudes of consumers that play them. The implications of this work may also ask us to reflect upon the commercial nature of arts experiences.

As you read these pieces, we hope that they inform and inspire your ideas and understanding of the multiplicity of subjects and perspectives that are inherent to our continued call to action: to delve into frictions between the arts and their related markets; to work across art forms and fields to create new approaches to understanding and expressing experiences of audiences and consumers; and, to inform and critique the positions and principles of arts marketing and the arts market, broadly constructed and construed across the globe. We cordially invite you to continue responding to this call to action and to boldly pursue and further thought leadership within this multidisciplinary nexus of themes and issues that are located at the heart of Arts and the Market.

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