Samenvatting

The Museum Volkenkunde (National Museum of Ethnology) in Leiden is a museum about people and their cultures. The museum’s activities consist of permanent exhibitions of objects from eight different cultural areas around the world as well as small and large temporary exhibitions. To attract visitors to the museum, it applies sales promotions. Through these means, the goal of the museum, which is a yearly increase in visitors, could be achieved. Through various partners, the museum offers various temporary price adjustments.
Because of this there has been a goal established for the marketing department of the Museum Volkenkunde:
too provide a matrix which can be used to support the Museum Volkenkunde in making the right decisions when entering into a new partnership for a sales promotion.
To achieve that goal, this thesis first indicates which types of promotional activities are most successful to attract additional visitors. To answer this question, the on-going and completed sales promotions had to be analysed. Also, the companies who did or might do a sales promotion had to be analysed on similarities with the mission/image and exhibition.
During this study, information is used from the information database museum itself. The material came from the POS system and agreements that the museum made with collaborators. Also, valuable data is collected through qualitative interviews and a quantitative survey.
In order to reach a conclusion, the main question has been answered with the help of sub-questions. To achieve successful sales promotion, first you must know who the target group is. The target group of the museum is world lovers; people who are interested in tourism/travel, film/video, history, spirituality and philosophy/religion. To find out which sales promotions would work best, it had to identified what kind of sales promotions the museum already uses. The museum uses four different types of sales promotions; a free ticket, entrance with a discount, a consumption in the cafe and a discount/gift in the museum shop. The next step was to determine which of these was most successful for the museum.
The desk research has shown that a 2=1 form (buy one ticket and visit the museum with two people) has brought the most visitors with one action. However, without the form 2=1, the € 2,50 discount was the most successful. The analysis of the field research through an online survey also revealed that a percentage discount is the most popular form among the respondents. Furthermore, the ratio between admission visitors with and without sales promotions has been examined. From 2014 until 2016, the museum had 446.375 visitors. Out of those visitors, 7.146 came through a sales promotion. There were 121 sales promotions in total, plotted by the museum. The (potential) visitor is informed about a discount through at least one of the thirty-two different partners of the museum. The quantitative study revealed that Facebook is the most used source where respondents find out about discounts.
To give a final conclusion about which form of sales promotion is most successful, it was also important to find out how the museum itself determines when an action is or is not successful. The qualitative research showed that an action is successful if a lot of people have seen it. It is already sufficient if the museum comes to the attention again. In addition to this, it is important that the goals (set at the beginning of the year) about the number of visitors the museum wants in one year and during the temporary exhibitions are achieved. For this target goal, the museum uses sales promotion.
To provide the museum with a matrix theory from General Electric and McKinsey about the GE/McKensy Matrix has been analysed. The McKinsey Matrix is used to determine which partners where successful on the criteria: similarities with the mission/image and exhibition, on how many people the company will range, the costs and the turnover.
By filling in the McKensy matrix the best partnerships for the museum are: ANWB, the magazine Happinez, the NS and the Wereld Natuur Fonds. I recommend to continue the collaboration with those companies because they had the best score on the matrix. Also, it is wise to continue with sales promotions through magazines, because there is a high probability that the same magazine is read by the target group. It is a direct way to confront the target group with the expositions taking place at the museum. For the exhibition, Decorated People, I suggest to provide a sales promotion in the form of 2=1 in the magazine Edelmetaal Update, which has an edition of 2.700 magazines. This is a magazine for jewellers, goldsmiths and other colleagues.