Introduction: Museums have always struggled with the economic aspects of their operations and Swedish museums today are no exception. Today the market economy has a considerable impact on these non-profit institutions and many museums feel the need to apply marketing strategies to their operations to stay viable. This is a contested subject since marketing strategies traditionally are focused on making profit, which has long been considered incompatible with the museums traditional, non-profit approach to their mission of spreading knowledge. My interest in this field lies in answering the question of how Swedish museums handle this issue. Aim: The purpose of this master thesis is to investigate how Swedish museums use marketing and brand identity in their organizations. The research questions aim not only to establish how they go about these challenges but also to shed light on the attitudes towards the marketing perspective and its implementation in museum organizations. I have studied both art museums and regional museums to establish if there are any differences in their approach to this subject. Method: In my research I have conducted interviews with informants at two art museums and two regional museums in Sweden. The interviews have been combined with observations of the chosen museums. Results: The results show that marketing and branding methods are established concepts in Swedish museums today. Limited economic resources and conflicting attitudes and opinions are nevertheless part of the daily challenges when it comes to applying marketing strategies in practice. Branding has been found to be a more controversial subject and the informants have had difficulties describing the museum in terms of brand identity and equity. Certain differences have been detected between the different types of museums, where regional museums struggle with the scope of their operations which is much wider than that of the art museums. Overall, this study has found that there are specific types of challenges and opportunities depending on the type of museum to be marketed, more so than the number of visitors which has shown to be of less importance. This is a two-year master’s thesis in Museum and Cultural Heritage Studies.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:uu-533122 |
| Date | January 2024 |
| Creators | Jansson, Emmy |
| Publisher | Uppsala universitet, Institutionen för ABM |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
| Relation | Uppsatser inom musei- & kulturarvsvetenskap, 1651-6079 ; 171 |
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