New Service Development Proposal for Athens Archeological Museum

M.Sc in Marketing Management DELIVERING CUSTOMER FOCUSED SERVICES

New Service Development Proposal for Athens Archeological Museum SPYROS LANGKOS ID: 100285557 Tutor: Mr. Roumeliotis George Athens, May 2013 Academic Year 2012 – 2013

This

study

concentrates

on

presenting

the

development of an idea for a new service for the National Archeological Museum of Athens. The main focus here, is to state how this new proposed service is consistent with the museum brand and in what way it will add value to the customers.

New Service Development for AMA |

2

1. TABLE OF CONTENTS

Pages

1.

Contents ....................................................................................... 3

2.

Acknowledgements .................................................................... 4

3.

Introuction ............................................................................... 5

4.

Executive Summary ................................................................... 6

5.

Analysis of Environment and Existing Service Offering................... .8

6.

Reasearch & Observation – Justification of New Service............... .11

7.

New Service Developement Process .......................................... .13

8.

Conclusion & Recommendations ............................................... .14

9.

Appendix ............................................................................... .15

10. Bibliography .......................................................................... .18

New Service Development for AMA |

3

2. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The development and the implementation of this report is made possible by the appreciation of my family and friends and also to the help of Andrew, the library bookkeeper. I would like to thank, our module teacher Mr. George Roumeliotis for his guidance so that we can bring closure to our assignment work.

I will also like to thank my colleagues for their interesting exchange of information and knowledge upon the subject. They gave me very clear insights and views upon my stated arguments.

.

New Service Development for AMA |

4

3. INTRODUCTION

3.1 Museum history

AMA is the first national archaeological museum in Greece and was established by prime minister of Greece Ioannis Kapodistrias in Aigina in 1829. Subsequently the archaeological collection was relocated to a number of exhibition places until 1858, when an international architectural competition was announced for the location and the architectural design of the new museum.

The current location was proposed and the construction of the museum's building began in 1866 and was completed in 1889 using funds from the Greek Government, the Greek Archaeological Society and the society of Mycenae. Major benefactors were Eleni Tositsa who donated the land for the building of the museum, and Demetrios and Nikolaos Vernardakis from Saint Petersburg who donated a large amount for the completion of the museum.

The National Archaeological Museum houses some of the most important artifacts from a variety of archaeological locations around Greece from prehistory to late antiquity. It is considered one of the great museums in the world and contains the richest collection of artifacts from Greek antiquity worldwide. It is situated in the Exarcheia area in central Athens between Epirus Street, Bouboulinas Street and Tositsas Street while its entrance is on the Patission Street adjacent to the historical building of the Athens Polytechnic university (AMA website,2012).

New Service Development for AMA |

5

4. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

In recent years museums have changed from being predominantly custodial institutions to becoming increasingly focused on audience attraction. New emphasis is placed on museum-audience interactions. This change in the purpose and priorities of museums has impacted upon the nature of museum service context and delivery of service products (A.Gilmore, 2002).

This report aims towards the development of a new service offering for the

Athens Archeological Museum. Our proposal, is to facilitate

innovation and embrace the ongoing trend which is on the rise, to update museums technological standards by introducing services concerning web interconnectivity and interaction of the museum with it’s visitors.

Through this consistent process the visitors of the museum will be able to gain a better and dynamic experience of the museum exhibitionspeciments-people.

Moreover,

they

will

enhance

their

after-service

expectations and become a positive source of information towards future traveller’s and act as ambassador of the museum brand. The main focus here

is

to

successfully

merge

heritage

&

tradition

with

modern

technological advancements, without affecting the image of the museum.

Traditionally, the prime function of the museum has been to gather, preserve and stuy objects. Our plan is to maintain a data-collection focus.

Today’s museum role has been upgrated. They are not only the gatekeepers of heritage and tradition, but have transformed to an active community enforcer. Therefore, in this digital era strengthening museums through information and data-sharing they will be better able to meet both demanding bottomlines of sustainability (financial solvency and mission execution).

New Service Development for AMA |

6

Although this is a future-oriented approach, the museum may present a gap between the desired performance and the actual resuts, due to the nature of AMA as a professional bureaucracy and prior non-profit organization, controlled and authorized by the Greek ministry of Culture.

The emphasis has been on improving the information technology infastractures and the professionalism of service providers within an integrated framework, implemented through a wide range of digital and web-bsed enchancements, in orer to provide special projects and form new programmes-events-exhibitions (C.Goulding, 2009).

New Service Development for AMA |

7

5. ANALYSIS OF ENVIRONMENT & EXISTING SERVICE OFFERING 5.1 Background With an annual budget of some €4 million and € 2.5 million current (variable) costs, the National Archaeological Museum in Athens has 170 permanent staff, along with some 100 temporary staff (mostly guards). Of the 800,000 annual visitors to the museum, some 500,000 are international.

The museum’s treasures include a panorama of Greek civilisation from the Neolithic era until the late Roman period (6800 BC – 4th century AD), viewed through high quality artefacts, a number of which have world renown. (Leonardo Da Vinci Programme, MU.S.EU.M. Project , 2006).

5.2 AMA service offering The core and augmented elements of the museum services are: Education: The education of the public is central to the entire museum service. The scope and range of the core collection has a direct impact upon the choice and quality of service to visitors.

Accessibility: includes ease of use of the physical facilities and the range of offerings.

Communication: includes the nature an the scope of interactions, entertainment and interpretation. (Wilson & Ziethalm, 2012).

The museum is located in an accessible area that is in the heart of the city center which is perceived by locals to be “a bad neibourhood”. Some times, in the annual period of a year, special exhibitions (like the Antikythira Mechanism Exhibition during this season) are often used to iniate additional events. For example, the above mentioned event has gathered a lot of publicity for the museum, fundraisings, sponshorships and advertising placement due to it’s significant historical value and uniqueness. It possesses a good architecture and environmental friendly souroundings. It also offers time for leisure activity through coffee and walking. The interior is simple and the scenery set is circular. There are two front-desk for customer service, a restaurant downsters and a library upon the 2nd floor. All these are offered with a relatively affordable cost.

The museum service is delivere in a physical environment or site which econpasses the land or building area, shape, lighting, means orienting the visitor, waiting, queues, crowing and methods of stimulating interest and engagement (Goulding, 2000).

New Service Development for AMA |

8

All the above are consistent as meaningfull service encounters to a small and not repetitive niche (elderly people/special scientific groups of researchers) of the wider audience, that is constantly deteriorating though the ages.

5. 3 Museum environment: Modernn Consumers: Nowadays, visitors are becoming incresingy demanding and judgemental.

The Generation X of modern customer is not still dominant in the overall population. On the contrary the next genearation is on the rise, those who we call the “Millenials (generation Y).

These       

emerging new consumer power is: Tech Savy Public service motivated Entrepreneurial Entitled and “over-eucated” Community oriented Connected Largest population group in history

Numerical impact: 74% of them believe technology makes life easier.

33% is more likely to purchase if somrthing has a Facebook page.

(Boston Group Consulatant, 2009) Audience: Social media accounts for ¼ of the time spent on the internet.

Mobile usage and search has been skyrocketed. They are not nly young, also 1/5 are 65+ have social accounts.

The visitor decision-making process is an important factor for choice and preference of a museum. Schedule, cost, travel distance, reputation, ease of access play major role towards the fulfillment of the proper decision.

New Service Development for AMA |

9

5.4 PEST Analysis The AMA Museum is a governmental institution with a director and nine departments (four collections of antiquities, archaeometry, conservation, technical, public relations, buro/economic), none of which deals – at least for the present - with digital, electronic or virtual practises. The Museum is included in the web site called ODYSSEUS created and enriched, by a central Direction in the Hellenic Ministry of Culture. This constitutes the museum’s web presence and it does not have the hardware or technical competence to intervene in its web presence. Links to other museums are via the Ministry site. The museum has no plans for web-related training or web-related investment or the development of e-learning materials.

The National Archaeological Museum views expansion of information and communications technologies as an opportunity to grow. In particular, the museum sees the development of ICT competences as necessary to widen the scope of its researcher’s interactions with other museums (especially archaeologists or conservators) and generally to allow the museum to play a stronger role in Greece’s information society.

The museum’s policy is to become always better and more attractive for its physical visitors. DVD’s are also prepared as well as an Audio-guides.

The museum hopes to expand both its physical and virtual visitors, exploiting its reputation as being amongst the most important and famous museums world-wide.

The position of the National Archaeological Museum of Athens is currently strong, but may be weakened because of the absence of digital competencies within the museum. In particular, the opportunity to increase physical visitor numbers, work with other museums and improve physical exhibitions as a result of work on virtual exhibits are being denied the museum because of its lack of digital competences.

New Service Development for AMA |

10

6. NEW SERVICE DEVELOPEMENT PROCESS

Because services are produced and consumed and co-created in real-time an often involve interactions between employees and customers, it is also critical that innovation and the new service development process involve both employees and customers. Employees frequently are the service, or at least they perform or deliver it, and thus their involvement in choosing which new service to develop and how should design and implemention be beneficial. (A.Wilson,2012).

As museums started to having websites, technological breakthrough infiltrated. New wab-based services and local attraction work together today with web & mobile integration.

The virtual museum must be seen as an e-service (MaaS – Museum as a Service viepoint), part of which is the provision of elearning materials and opportunities for knowledge networking, in addition to shared design and content of virtual exhibitions.

All e-services share three dimensions: connectivity, interactivity and agility. 

 

Interactivity: here refers to virtual and physical presence and the relation between them (the 'click-and-brick' balance). The emphasis here is upon functional integration i.e. qualitative deployment of knowledge, rather than simply the multiplication of functions. Interactivity is purposive and not an end to itself.

Connectivity: is both technical and social, it entails both communications linkages and knowledge networking via interorganisational links and the integration of fragmented functions within the museum.

Agility: (see Nagel and Dove, 1992) suggest long-term interorganisational relationships from which museums learn in addition to learning from their environmental. Hence, agility also means having the absorptive capacity and/or knowledge generating ability to resourcefully participate in knowledge networks. Critically, the term means the capability and desire to continually innovate organisational or technological change in order to remain aligned with unfolding business opportunities.

New Service Development for AMA |

11

Propsed applications for the museum: 















Interior wifi systems Video and photo galleries (offline & online) QR codes scanning for exhibit categorization Augmented reality screening for special artifacts Interactive web-cam apps Gamification of exhibits with social apps development Mobile ticketing Digital 360 3D space review

Virtual visits: People, wherever they are, will be able to use the electronic networks to reach out across geographical barriers to national, regional and local museums. By providing more access points to the the Library Network, will offer many more places where people can use the networks.

The new technologies offer new ways for the museum to work for social inclusion. Disabled people and others subject to barriers of distance or other factors will be able to benefit from the museum.

6. 1 Creating the digital museum Digital museum will deliver access and services in a variety of ways: • Centres in museum, for informationaccess and participative activities • Interactive gallery exhibits, participatory activities, personal digital guides, etc.

• Online information and services delivered via the internet, some free and some by subscription • Through multimedia publishing media, CD ROMs, digital television, commercial service providers, etc. Common to all these will be the digitized content and services which will enable access to collections and information, participative input, and two-way interaction between users, staff, museum and many different publics.

The new digital services must have the ability to respond to people’s different interests and to their diverse requirements and cultural and learning preferences. To do this, gateways to the networks need to be developed – portals to online resources of all kinds – in combination with search and navigation tools. These gateways are as important as are any of the resources to which they lead. Indeed, gateways will be at the heart of the National Grid for Learning.

New Service Development for AMA |

12

7. REASEARCH & OBSERVATION: JUSTIFICATION OF NEW SERVICE 7.1 Internal Training Museum staff, volunteers and a wider public will require new skills to create, manage and maintain participatory and truly interactive digital applications. Museum people will need to understand experiential learning and the techniques of information management and multimedia creation.

They will also need to draw on inputs from a wide range of disciplines.

7.2 Making a start on personel training Skills that will be needed: • To digitise, manipulate, and maintain museum collections information, images and other resources • To develop new approaches to maximize the learning opportunities offered by digital museums • To define and manage multimedia projects • To enable customer care staff to help visitors to use information and communication technology • To work with others to enable community projects and create cultural resources. First will have to train their own staff in the skills of using digital technologies and museum resources to enable public learning and participation, and to assist users. The second is training for the museums' public, to enable both adults and children to make creative use of cultural resources in their communities.

Training for volunteers must also not be overlooked. Volunteers play a productive role in museum services. Many small museums are crucially dependent on them. This is another opportunity offered by the new technologies: to engage the enthusiasm, skills and interests of volunteers to helpcreate digital resources.

New Service Development for AMA |

13

8. CONCLUSION & RECOMMENDATIONS

Museums vary widely in the size and quality of their collections and their ability to research, catalogue and display in permanent and special exhibitions their stock of treasures. Virtuality adds the further dimensions of connectivity, interactivity and agility to the points differentiating museums. In doing so particular attention mast be given to the staff competences and training needs of the museums.

In Athens, the National Archaeological Museum already has a high level of visitors, yet is almost equally constrained by lack of direct connectivity. In setting out its vision of creating a pilot virtual pre-history. A key need is the systematic upgrading of ICT and web-related competences in museums.

This

report

has

shown

how,

with

appropriate

information

and

communications technology, the museum can make a key contribution to:

• Supporting the learning society • Access and social inclusion • Excellence and support for the creative industries.

In the following years, we envisage every the museum becoming connected to the Grid. The outcome will be an enormous increase in the number of people who can use the resources of our museum, and in the range and quality of services and information provided for them for learning and for enjoyment.

New Service Development for AMA |

14

9. APPENDIX A] Trip Advisor English reviews examples from visitors for AMA (page 70) “the best museum in Athens” Reviewed 1 March 2012, by Andreas. A, Gothenburg, Sweden, Contributor This is the best museum I have ever visited in Greece. Better even than the Acropolis museum. Thousands of exhibits. However one must visit it during the daylight because the area at night is a bit dangerous.

“Impressive” Reviewed 1 March 2012, by your_solemate, Szekesfehervar, Hungary, Senior Contributor I must say this museum is one of the best I've visited. I'm not a museum fan, but I enjoyed my visit tremendously. When we visited, there was an exhibit on myths and coinage, which was very interesting and informative.

There are a lot of artifacts to see, although in my opinion some pieces were redundant so it can get tiring. I recommend getting a guide to make sure you don’t miss the important sculptures and details.

“So big...”

Reviewed 29 February 2012, by fefa, Top Contributor - Campinas, SP You will need more than three hours to pass by...the people working there are not nice at all, and they should have more patience with tourists.

“A must see” Reviewed 28 February 2012, by Kate.O, Senior Reviewer Hastings, United Kingdom Another great place to visit for historical facts. Not that brilliant if you want to learn more about the myths, which was the purpose of my visit.

Still, there were sights to see that made it all worthwhile.

New Service Development for AMA |

15

B] AMA Overall reviews image – Tripadvisor.com

New Service Development for AMA |

16

C] AMA Museum SWOT ANALYSIS Strengths

Weaknesses

• fair web presence

• Web presence externally controlled

• Financially secure

• Little internal ICT competence

• DVD and Audio-guide

• No training plans

• High visitor numbers (especially international visitors), good location

• Static web exhibition • No digital catalogue

• Strong international reputation • Strong archaeology research competency

• Few virtual links with nonGreek museums

Opportunities

Threats

• Plans to develop web competences • Advanced ICT infrastructure in Athens

• Not part of emergent virtual museum networks apart from MU.S.EU.M. project

• Opportunity to further expand visitor numbers via virtual presence

• No benefit into physical exhibitions from lessons of virtual exhibitions

New Service Development for AMA |

17

10. BIBLIOGRAPHY Academic Journals 1. Ozge Ozgen, S.D Kurt (2012). Pre-recovery and post-recovery emotions in the service context: a preliminary study. Managing Srvice Quality Review. Vol. 22, No. 6, pp. 592-605 2. D. Battaglia et al (2012). Service Recovery: a method for assessing performance. Business Process Management Journal. Vol. 18, No.6, pp. 949-963 3. E.Thwaites, C. Williams (2006). Service Recovery: a naturalistic decision-making approach. Managing Service Quality Review.

Vol.16, No.6, pp.641-653 4. A.Gilmore, R. Rentschler (2002). Changes in museum management.

A custodial or marketing emphasis ?. Journal of management development. Vol. 21, No. 10, pp. 745-760 5. C. Vandi, E. Djebbari (2011). How to create new services between library resources, museum exhibitions and virtual collections. Library High Tech news. Number 2, pp.15-18 6. L.A. Wilson, E. Boyle (2004). The role of pertnerships in the delivery of local government museum services: A case study from Northern Ireland.

The International Journal of Public Sector Management. Vol.17, No.6, pp. 513-533 7. C. Goulding (2000). The museum environment and the visitor experience. European Journal of Marketing. Vol. 34, No 他, pp.

261-278 8. D. Kelly, C. Storey (2000). New Service Development: initiation strategies.

International Journal of Service Industry Management. Vol. 11, No.1, pp. 45-62 9. C. Boshoff (1996). An experimental study of service recovery options. International Journal of Service Industry Management.

Vol. 8, No.2, pp. 110-130 10. A. Johne, C. Storey (1998). New Service Development: a review of the literature and annotated bibliography. European Journal of Marketing. Vol.32, No.3/4, pp. 184-251

New Service Development for AMA |

18

11. A. B. Jones, R. Silvestro (2010). Measuring internal service quality: comparing the gap-based and perceptions-only approaches.

International Journal of Operations & Production Management. Vol.30, No.12, pp. 1291-1318 12. R. Sousa, A. Yeung, T.C.E Cheng (2008). Customer heterogeneity in operational esign e-service design attributes: an empirical investigation of service quality.

International Journal of Operations & Production Management. Vol. 28, No. 7, pp. 592614 13. C. P. Bebko (2001). Service encounter problems: which service providers are more likely to be blamed ?. Journal of Service Marketing. Vol. 15, No. 6, pp. 480-495 14. J. J. Cronin, S.A. Taylor (1994). SERVPER vs SERVQUAL: reconciling performance-based and perception-minus-expectations measurement of service quality. Journal of Marketing. Vol. 58, pp 125-131

Academic Books 1. A. Wilson et al (2012). Services Marketing. Integrating Customer Focus Across the Firm. McGraw Hill. 2nd European Edition.

2. Fisk R, J. Johne, Grove.S (2008). Interactive Services. Boston. 3rd Edition. Houghton Miffliin.

Marketing

Internet      

http://penn.museum/documents/publications/expedition/PDFs/52-1/zeus.pdf [Accessed -10/5/2013] http://www.europeanvirtualmuseum.it/pdf/Delphi%20report%20for%20Web.pdf [Accessed - 7/5/2013] http://www.utexas.edu/research/pasp/publications/pdf/unlocking.pdf [Accessed 28/4/2013] http://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/sources/docgener/presenta/cities/cities_en.pdf [Accessed-26/4/2013] http://whc.unesco.org/uploads/activities/documents/activity-113-2.pdf [Accessed - 19/4/2013] http://www.lsa.umich.edu/UMICH/modgreek/Home/Window%20to%20Greek%20C ulture/Lectures%20at%20U-M/LaUM_Damaskos_Archaelogy.pdf [Accessed -



20/4/2013]



374-EN.PDF [Accessed - 14/4/2013]



http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/cache/ITY_OFFPUB/KS-32-10-374/EN/KS-32-10-

http://www.namuseum.gr/wellcome-gr.html [Accessed - 12/4/2013] http://www.tripadvisor.com.gr [Accessed - 4/5/2013]

New Service Development for AMA |

19