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

New Service Development for AMA | 2

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.


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


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.

.


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).


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 exhibition-

speciments-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).


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).


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).


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.


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.


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 e-learning 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 inter-organisational links and the integration of fragmented functions

within the museum.

Agility: (see Nagel and Dove, 1992) suggest long-term inter-

organisational 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.


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.


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.


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.


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.


B] AMA Overall reviews image – Tripadvisor.com


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 non-

Greek 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


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 ¾, 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


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. 592-614

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 Marketing

Services. Boston. 3rd Edition. Houghton Miffliin.

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]

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

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

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

http://www.tripadvisor.com.gr [Accessed - 4/5/2013]

http://penn.museum/documents/publications/expedition/PDFs/52-1/zeus.pdf

http://www.europeanvirtualmuseum.it/pdf/Delphi%20report%20for%20Web.pdf

http://www.utexas.edu/research/pasp/publications/pdf/unlocking.pdf

http://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/sources/docgener/presenta/cities/cities_en.pdf

http://whc.unesco.org/uploads/activities/documents/activity-113-2.pdf

http://www.lsa.umich.edu/UMICH/modgreek/Home/Window%20to%20Greek%20Culture/Lectures%20at%20U-M/LaUM_Damaskos_Archaelogy.pdf

http://www.lsa.umich.edu/UMICH/modgreek/Home/Window%20to%20Greek%20Culture/Lectures%20at%20U-M/LaUM_Damaskos_Archaelogy.pdf

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

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

http://www.namuseum.gr/wellcome-gr.html

http://www.tripadvisor.com.gr/