Segmenting cultural consumers in the experiential perspective: does it make sense?

The main objective of this study is to cluster museum visitors (Wedel and Kamakura, 2002) using the experiential dimensions of Pine and Gilmore (1999). To attain this goal, first, an exploratory factor analysis has been performed and, second, adopting the factorial scores herein obtained, a cluster analysis with K-Means technique has been conducted on a sample of Italian and Finnish museum visitors. Data has been collected through a survey via face-to-face interviews on a sample of visitors to the National Gallery of the Marche, a state-run museum focused on the Renaissance period, and to the Turku Art Museum, an art museum located in Turku, the old capital of Finland. The empirical research revealed six different clusters of visitors; some clusters may be considered the “classic” museum visitors who are mainly interested in the edutainment and esthetic dimensions of the museum experience, while other clusters represent the “new targets” who are not interested in edutainment or less interested in all the dimensions of the visiting experience. The main managerial implication for museums consists investing resources in all kinds of experiences to satisfy heterogeneous targets.