Chapter 6: Conclusion

Museum role, in recent decades, has been turned from ‘object oriented’ to visitor oriented. And this change has brought new theories and concepts into the museum role in the society. Instead of people looking to visit museum, museum is seeking their audiences. This change introduced the idea of museum marketing to develop the audiences for the museum. Museum marketing concentrates on the ‘product’ to market to the consumers. In order to set the successful marketing plan for a museum, audiences surveys are considered appropriate to measure the needs and wants for the people. Listening to the audiences requirements and responding to them with appropriate action is a successful plan to develop audiences for any museum.
In order to evaluate any audience, it is crucial to understand the context of the museum and that of its audience. In this study, Tinos Archaeological Museum has its own context and historical standing in the Greek museums. Greece, with its rich historical back ground and massive collections of antiquities, has its own context in the museums world. Local museums in Greece carry a specific role within this context. Socio-cultural circumstances of Greece in general and Tinos in particular played a role in this study at a certain level.
Despite of the active research in UK, USA and Canada about museum marketing and about developing audiences, Greece has very limited literature (as mentioned in literature review chapter) on developing local audience. Local museums in Greece carrying a static role in Greek modern social life and are unable to attract the local public and cannot compete attractions available to the public in the modern age. Due to this static role of museums, local public is almost ignorant about their existence in Greece and consider them as a ‘site’ to be visited by tourists only.
In the abovementioned circumstances, this study aimed to evaluate local public response in order to find the reasons behind their non-involvement. This study explored the responses of the non-visitors to underline the needs and wants of the local public, which could engage them with the museum. During the analysis of audience response (in chapter 4) it was observed that local public is aware of the global changes in the museum world and identify local museum static role and find no reason to visit it unless it is changed. In today’s world, it is no more possible to maintain a museum’s existence without basic needs for the visitors. Therefore certain basic facilities were identified through audience response and are recommended to the local authorities and museum itself to provide these facilities to the visitors. The local public compare the local museum with the national museums of Greece and expect it to be at the same level in providing environment and facilities inside the museum. Hence, certain changes inside the museum in order to provide better visiting experience to the visitors are also identified through this study. Museum’s role to compete other attractions in order to market itself requires enhancements and changes in the events and exhibitions. Beside the basic facilities and change in the exhibitions, there are certain changes required to attract the new audiences. These changes were identified in the non-visitors response and confirmed through the previous studies. Recommendations about the activities for certain groups were made in chapter 6. Families, elderly people, and people with special needs require special attention to create activities for them and treat them friendly during their visit.
Museum advertisement was also considered a vital part in developing audience by spreading information about new exhibitions and activities though popular local media. Since local museum, studied in this research, has its specific context and circumstances, recommendations were made accordingly. There are certain changes, local museum can adapt with less resources required. Collaboration with local authorities, forming museum friendly groups, exchanging objects with peer museums, and inviting local businesses for their promotions can provide funding and support to such changes.
As Ambrose said ‘The most successful museums are those which put their users first’, this study concludes that ‘the local museums should be accessed and visited by the local public first’. By involving local audience these museums will not only be revitalized in their existence but also create better impression in the international tourists’ minds. This study draws the attention of the local museums of Greece to the changing role of the museum globally and recommends that all measures should be taken to adapt new changes in the museum tradition of Greece that can bring Greek museums equal to any modern museum in UK, USA or Canada.  

I would like to end this research paper with the acknowledgement of certain limitations of this research and suggestion for further studies in this course. First limitation of this study was its scope. I had to set the limit on the number of interviewees and data collected through these interviews. A broader survey through more interviews could bring more accurate picture of the situation. Another limitation, I found, was unavailability of previous research in Greece or other countries having similar conditions. I found it difficult to map all the conditions of a local Greek museum with any of the museums here in UK, since there is a vast gap between these two. At this point, I may suggest a study with more than one museum in order to compare and confirm the research findings. I find it appropriate to suggest if a country-wide survey could be arranged to understand the whole context of local community involvement in the local museums.

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Appendix A: Questions for the interviews of non-visitors of Tinos Archaeological Museum.

Note: The above questions were asked to the interviewees in Greek language and responses were translated from Greek to English by me.

APPENDICES

Fig.1. The Tinos archaeological museum, entrance.

Fig. 2. The Tinos archaeological museum, entrance

Fig.3. Inside the museum stairs

Fig. 4. An explanatory label, since 1960’s.

Fig. 5. Objects’ label

Fig. 6. Inside the museum, an exhibition’s room.

Fig. 7. A case

Fig. 8. An explanatory label

Fig. 9. An exhibition’s room

Fig. 10. An object with its label