Twelfth International Conference on The Inclusive Museum

Abstract

Detecting the strengths and weaknesses of the services they offer is a critical task for museums. Museums have to ensure they use what they have as efficiently as possible with limited resources available. In the past, however, most visitor studies in museums have only looked at either visitor expectations or actual service performance. We often find it hard to use the results of these studies into action. To tackle this issue, the importance-performance analysis has been used in this research to show how to assess visitor expectation and satisfaction in the Changsha Museum, China. The research demonstrates that it could help museums to determine which service attributes should have resources assigned to them first. In the study, a questionnaire survey of 379 visitors was conducted in the Changsha Museum to measure their expectation and actual performance of museum service attributes. Fieldwork was carried out over a three-month period, from 2nd of July to 8th of October, 2018. Visitors were asked fourteen questions about their expectations and satisfaction with services, and their answers recorded on a 5-point Likert scale. The result shows that importance-performance analysis technique is a good way of evaluating the expectation and satisfaction of museum service attributes. The importance-performance analysis clearly shows the strengths and weaknesses of the Changsha Museum. It helps museums to distribute their resources with more confidence. However, there is one limitation need be mentioned. Importance-performance analysis will not be appropriate across the whole museum sector because service attributes in different museums are not the same.