Strangers, Guests, or Clients? Visitor Experiences in Museums

Abstract

This paper discusses three different attitudes that museums hold towards their visitors: stranger, guest, and client.Stranger: This attitude arises when the museum believes that its primary responsibility is to the collection and not to the public.Guest: From this point of view, the museum wants to "do good" for visitors out of a sense of mission, primarily through "educational" activities and institutionally defined "learning objectives."Client: This paper suggests that social trends will force museums to adopt attitudes and behaviors in which the museum is accountable to the visitor. Institutions will then acknowledge that visitors, as clients, have needs, expectations, and wants that the museum is obligated to understand and meet.The paper also discusses four major categories that describe the types of experiences that individuals prefer and find most satisfying in museums. The categories are based on empirical research conducted in nine different Smithsonian museums. The categories are:Social experiences center on one or more other people, besides the visitor.Object experiences give prominence to the artifact or the "real thing."Cognitive experiences emphasize the interpretive or intellectual aspects of the experience.Introspective experiences focus on the visitor's personal reflections, usually triggered by an object or a setting in the museum.The paper concludes with a brief discussion of the museum settings, or servicescapes," that support or detract from the experiences of visitors./ I

Achieving effective visitor orientation in European museums. Innovation versus custodial

“…In order to cope with competition, museums need to offer a high-quality museum experience if they are to retain and enlarge their power of appeal [13]. They must also seek to adapt their services and activities to the wide-ranging interests, needs, and expectations of current visitors if they are to give them a satisfying, educational, and valuable museum experience [13,14]. In the current environment, the concern for visitor experience means that museums must look beyond the traditional focus on collections and even the more recent focus on information and education.…”

Design factors in the museum visitor experience

“…The influence of market-derived terminology is evident in Doering's (1999) definitions of three main ways in which museums could view their visitors: "strangers", "guests" or "clients". When the museum sees visitors as strangers, visitors come on the museum's terms and are sometimes only grudgingly accepted.…”

“…Taking this power balance a step further, when museums see their visitors as clients, they are accountable to their visitors. Museum visitation is recognised as another leisure-going activity in a competitive marketplace and the institutional focus is on service to the public as well as care for collections (Doering, 1999).…”

“…While the movement from strangers to guests to clients does not necessarily represent a historical trajectory - Doering (1999) claimed that examples of all coexist and the same museum may view their audiences differently in different operational contexts -there has been a tendency over time for visitors to be increasingly framed in either the guest or client role. Irrespective of whether the key driver of this is philosophical repositioning or market imperatives, understanding visitors' needs and meeting them is now an essential aspect of museums achieving their strategic objectives.…”

“…As well as the nature of experience offered, prior motivations and expectations of visitors will influence what visitors choose to engage with and thus the resulting experience -these initial visitor agendas are sometimes referred to as "entrance narratives" (Doering, 1999). Visitor expectations tend to frame the resulting experience, with there being a strong agreement between expectations and eventual experience among visitors to various Smithsonian exhibitions (Pekarik & Schreiber, 2012).…”