The Influence of Market and Product Orientation on Museum Performance

Carmen Camarero, María José Garrido

Carmen Camarero is an associate professor at the University of Valladolid, Spain. Her research, which focuses on business relationships and on consumer relationship marketing, has been published in several national and international journals. Her main research interests are relationship marketing and consumer behaviour. She has written two books and several book chapters.
María José Garrido is an associate professor of marketing at the University of Valladolid, Spain. Her research, which focuses on industrial behaviour, internal marketing and cultural marketing, has been published in the Journal of Business and Industrial Marketing and the International Journal of Human Resource Management. She has written a book on industrial buying behaviour and another on cultural heritage marketing.

ABSTRACT 
The marketing literature emphasises the importance of an organization’s market orientation on its performance. In museums and other cultural organizations, however, the implementation of a marketing orientation should be intrinsically linked to a product orientation. The authors explain how the interrelationship of product orientation and market orientation influences a museum’s economic and social performance. This empirical analysis of 182 Spanish museums reveals that social performance is strongly related to product and customer orientation, while economic performance depends mainly on social results and coordinated management.
KEYWORDS
Market orientation, product orientation, museums
RÉSUMÉ
La littérature sur le marketing met l’accent sur l’importance de l’orientation marché pour la performance d’une organisation. Cependant, dans les musées et autres organismes culturels, l’adoption d’une orientation marketing devrait être intrinsèquement liée à une orientation produit. Les auteures expliquent comment l’interrelation entre les orientations produit et marché influe sur la performance économique et sociale d’un musée. Cette analyse empirique de 182 musées espagnols révèle que la performance sociale est étroitement liée à une orientation produit et client, tandis que la performance économique dépend surtout des résultats enregistrés au niveau social et d’une gestion coordonnée.
MOTS CLÉS 
Orientation marché, orientation produit, musées
RESUMEN 
Se enfatiza en las publicaciones sobre mercadotecnia la importancia que tiene para el desempeño de una organización su orientación comercial. En el ámbito, sin embargo, de los museos y otros entes culturales la orientación comercial debe estar intrínsecamente vinculada al producto. Los autores explican cómo el rendimiento económico y social de un museo depende de la interrelación entre la orientación comercial y la orientación al producto. El análisis empírico de 182 museos españoles revela la fuerte vinculación del desempeño social con un enfoque orientado al cliente y al producto, mientras que el rendimiento económico depende principalmente de los resultados sociales y la coordinación gerencial.
PALABRAS CLAVE 
Orientación comercial, orientación al producto, museos