Development of Strategies Forming the Museum Store Product Offer

This project is intended to highlight the primary commodification strategies, used by museums in their activities, focusing primarily on assortment of a museum shop. Although the topic is one of the traditional studies, there are comparatively few theoretical and empirical publications on the study in question. Thus, it seems to be in the interest of stakeholders involved in commodification process. The museum consumer engagement policy changes in time, and it is very important therefore to bring such examinations in a timely manner. This study attempts to become one of these investigations and aims at exploring the strengths and shortcomings of museum activities in the commodification. The actual data available will be used to analyze foreign commodification strategies and museum store assortment structure. The goal of the project is to provide recommendations of museum commodification strategies’ optimization and will be achieved via a couple of methods, both qualitative and quantitive. Among the instruments applied the following may be highlighted: in-depth analysis - in order to analyze the structure of museum shop assortment, based on the leading worldwide museums’ practice; NPS index - in order to calculate the loyalty of visitors / customers; and finally a decision tree analysis (DTs) was conducted, based on the expert interview - in order to decide if it is worth to launch a product in the product line of the State Central Museum of Contemporary History of Russia. This research study’s findings will redound both to society’s benefits and art sector stakeholders, considering that museums play a vital role in social development today. The greater demand for art managers with a museum marketing background justifies the need for more effective and modernized approaches of commodification strategies, adapted to meet the needs of the today’s museums. Thus, the management of the museum that apply the recommended approach obtained through the results of this research will manage the art institutions more effectively. For the researcher, the study will disclosure certain critical areas in the management of art institutions that many researchers could not explore. Thus, some conceptual tools modification and recommendations on commodification museum strategies may be arrived at.