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I need different answer because plagirism is prohibited.
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Each question should ha e at least 200 words answer.
The Museum of Art and Design is a small privately owned The team interviewed four members of the museum staff museum located in the center of Helsinki, Finland. It occuples and then prepared a questionnaire for visitors to fill out. a beautiful three-story 19th century building that used to be a Thirty-two visitors responded to the questionnaire, shown in school. It specializes in design and industrial art. The museum Figure 6.7. Museum management and contact personnel (i.e was founded in the early 20th century and its original goal primarily guides) filed out the same questionnaire, responding was to educate the public about design. During the big era of as if they were customers. The team did a statistical analysis Finnish design in the 1950s, the museum focused on Finnish of the questionnaire results to identily gaps between museum design. Recently, however, the museum has become more personnel's (i.e, both management and contact personnel) outward looking and frequently organizes international exhib- perceptions of the services offered and visitors' perceptions. its. Last spring, for example, the museum brought the Dalai Lama to Finland for a big Tibet exhibit. GAP ANALYSIS On the basis of the questionnaire responses, the team found The museum themes bridge both the past and the future. The museum produces its own exhibits and hosts exhibits from other museums, both foreign and Finnish. It strives to have three or four major exhibits per year, in addition to devot- ing space to a number of smaller exhibits and its own private collection. The museum has a private café and a gift shop owned by the museum foundation. Customers include profes- sional design people as well as lay people. The typical museum the increased cultural several categories of gaps between the museum personnel's perceptions and visitors' perceptions. The gaps were related to how visitors heard of the exhibits, information, experience whether or not visitors come alone, and facilities. A graph showing the gaps was presented in Figure 6.8 earlier in this chapter. Awareness of Exhibits Visitors to the museum obtained information about exhibits primarily from newspapers, but also from magazines and by word-of-mouth. Management, however, thought newspa- pers played a smaller role in creating awareness but they were accurate about the influence of magazines. Management also thought word-of-mouth was significantly more important than it was and that the radio was a more important source of infor- mation than it was. visitor was a middle-aged woman, but t emphasis has been attracting a wider audience. Recently after the building had undergone significant renovation, the new managing director hired a communications manager never had a public relations person before. The advertising that was done in this year alone equaled the amount of advertising that had been done in the past 20 years. As a result of the new effort to increase the visibility of the museum, and the popular Tibet exhibit, the museum had a record number of visitors-more than 100,000 people. Only 5 Information Two types of gaps related to information were identified. The of Finland's 1,000 museums attracted that many people The museum is privately owned by a foundation, but does first gap concerns the museum management and contact per- receive 60 percent of its budget from government funding. sonnel who believe that visitors are highly aware of their serv- Forty percent of its budget is derived from operating revenues. ices. The management and contact personnel also believed In addition to admission tickets sold, other revenue comes they were an easy source of information for customers. The from the café, the gift shop, and events that the museum visitors, however, did not agree. This gap might exist because organizes in connection with exhibits. Lectures on wine and the contact personnel do not perceive that visitors would have wine-tasting evenings, for example, were offered in conjunc- any problem identilying or having contact with them. tion with an exhibit on wines. The museum also has a closed In the second gap, management was more critical in society called Friends of the Museum, which provides the its assessment of clarity and adequacy of information and museum with funding to buy more objects for its private col explanations about exhibited objects. The visitors in turn were lection. The museum's major competition comes from the more positive about these issues. Visitors did not seem to have specialist museums: Design Forum, the University of Design an interest in self-guided material (e.g, headphones), but the Museum, and the Finnish National Museum, which is going to museum staff thought that it might be worthwhile to look into open a new museum of ethnography in Helsinki the possibility of having such material. We might conclude that visitors might have a preference for human contact. WALK-THROUGH AUDIT A walk-though audit (WtA) of the Museum of Art and Design Experience was conducted by a team of students from the MBA program at Visitors appreciated the multidimensional aspects of exhib- the Helsinki School of Economics and Business Administration. its, such as musik, but managers underestimated how much The WIA is a survey questionnaire used to evaluate a service the visitors noticed and appreciated them. Contact personnel from the perspective of the customers experience. The same were more in touch than management with visitors' views on survey is also given to managers and staff to identify "gaps" the spacing of displays. Both the visitors and the museum staff between the perceptions of managers and customers. The were not sure about experimenting with new experiences WA is used as a diagnostic tool to uncover misconceptions such as those involving the senses, having more interactions, in the perceptions of what customers are experiencing during and demonstrating processes. Perhaps this factor is explained the service delivery process by lack of familiarity with these types of interaction. Visitor Habits The museum staff believed that visitors came alone more often than they did. In fact, a large number came in twos or threes. Museum staff also had a different perception of visitors' inter. ests in exhibit offerings. Even though the management most visitors went to all of the exhibits, only 38 percent of the visitors saw all the exhibits. The remaining visitors came for one of the main exhibits and did not spend time at the others. The permanent exhibit received the smallest number of visitors i.e., 13 percent including three foreign visitors). We might conclude that each exhibit attracts different visitors thought. Language thought Museum managers and contact personnel are aware that infor- mation is presented primarily in Finnish and Swedish. Of the 32 visitors surveyed, only three were nonnative speakers and, therefore, the majority did not identify language as a problem area. During the summer tourist season, more visitors would probably identify the limitations of information that is available only in Finnish or Swedish. ad a more favorable opinion of the facilities 1. Critique the WIA gap analysis. Could there be other expla- 2. Make recommendations for closing the gaps found in the than did the museum management and personnel. Specifically visitors rated food value, gift selection, signage, and cleanli- ness of restrooms favorably. Perhaps the expectations of visi-
Explanation / Answer
1. The gaps showed the difference in the visitors' perception of factors and that of management and staff. The management focused on broader aspects of customer experience like relatively expensive modes of communication, use of gadgets for tour and believed that the customers were aware of all the services offered by the management and had very high expectations, which was in fact not true. The customers needed personalised and detailed information about the exhibits which was the purpose of their visit.
The gap analysis could have been conducted with a bigger sample to reveal some other facts. Further, the visitors were from the same geographical area and culture, they would have some beliefs common. Since they came in group of 3-4, it is possible that the opinion of the head or the most influential person of that group was the groups's collective opinion. This might have reduced to the number of different opinions to 7-8, which is certainly not adequate to derive a conclusion.
Gaps could have been caused due to inability of staff to communicate properly to the visitors about the facilities and exhibits at the museum, perhaps due to lack of training or good communication skills that may have left the visitors on their own to explore and they saw what they could have seen on their own. This might have explained why the visitors did not see all the exhibits and were more interested in cosmetic changes what the management actually wanted them to see.
2. The recommendations
(a) Training of the staff to increase their knowledge about the exhibits and other aspects of museum, their ability to explain and improve their mannerism and poise while dealing with visitors. Training them in some major languages will be useful.
(b) Making the information available in different languages.
(c) Focussing on core activites of the museum, besides keeping a good state, the subsidiary things like food, restrooms, gift shops etc.
(d) Making the experience interactive with use of mix of technology and human skills to help the visitors know more about the museum and make maximum out of their visit.
