Background
The Royal Albert Memorial Museum (RAMM) is an award winning museum in the centre of Exeter. After a multi-million pound refurbishment in 2010, Exeter City Council and the museum management needed to demonstrate the economic and cultural value of the revamped museum to the City.
Challenge
RAMM wanted to identify key performance indicators for the visitor experience to the museum in order to identify areas for improvement and measure the impact of these. Additionally, the museum wanted to understand how the visitors would describe the museum and how it compared to other museums of its type. Finally, the management wanted to capture behavioural and socio-demographic data to better manage its offering and its marketing activities.
Solution
We devised a self completion questionnaire which could be handed out by museum staff and our researchers upon entry to the museum. These could then be deposited in various boxes placed around the museum. In order to ensure a statistically robust sample, our researchers also conducted a number of face to face interviews. Post codes were captured which were then run against a national profiling database to further enhance the profile information on the types of visitors to the museum.
Outcome
The initial survey gave the museum management and the City Council a validated and independent view of the importance of the museum to the City, its economic contribution in terms of attracting visitors to the City and the ability to address some minor operational issues post refurbishment. Benchmark data on key performance indicators is now measured and tracked annually and additional survey questions have enabled the management to gain insights into other key areas of potential development for the museum such as expanding the retail offering.
