Museum Audience Insight

The Infrequent Visitor Mom (and yes, we need a snappier name for this segment of moms!)

The past few weeks we have been discussing what we call “Ultra Moms.”  Moms who have a strong primary motivation for visiting museums.  Before we move on to our dads data, there is one more category of moms to explore.  The mom who visits less frequently, and is on the cusp of being a casual visitor.

We’ve talked a lot on this blog about Core Visitors and Museum Advocates, and that many moms cycle in and out of museums based on the ages of her children, falling back into more casual visitation when her children become tweens, teens, or leave the house, returning to museums as a grandmother when her children become parents themselves.

Our latest survey captured a small number of moms who appear to be on the verge of falling into that casual visitation category.  When asked why they visit museums, they selected the answer “we go while on vacation, or if there is something specific we really want to see or do.”  That is, they go when it is an attraction at a vacation destination, or when something suits their interests perfectly.  Otherwise, not so much.  Just over 5% of moms in our survey fall into this category.

Not surprisingly, these moms are not that engaged with museums.  They are the least likely of all moms to say their local museum is good for family time, learning opportunities for children, fun, or that their children love it.  Few identify themselves as curious, and they are the least likely to feel the museum is a good value.  But they are significantly more likely than Ultra-Fun, Ultra-Family-Time, and Ultra-Learning Moms to say they visit out of interest in the subject matter (though not as likely as Ultra-Curious Moms).  This makes sense, as when they do visit it is because there is something they really want to see or do.

These moms are not the most negative about the museum, however (that is still the Ultra-Learning Mom).  Just the least engaged. And while they are more likely than Ultra-Fun, Ultra-Family-Time, and Ultra-Learning moms to visit history-based museums, generally they report lower museum visitation across the board.  Therefore, it shouldn’t be much of a surprise that they reported the lowest level of museum visitation during their childhoods, further indicating that high engagement with museums in childhood is important for driving high engagement with museums for adults.  (They are also the least likely of all moms to visit their local public library regularly; our research is indicating there is a library-going cycle just like there is a museum-going cycle.)

These moms are generally older moms with the oldest children, which makes sense as they may be dropping out of that museum-going cycle as their primary motivation for visiting, their children, are busy and getting ready to leave the nest.

Yet these moms still did take the time to complete the survey, indicating there is some connection, some interest in museums.  The challenge for museums, just like with the other mom segments, is tapping into that connection, that interest, however latent, and building a long-term relationship with the mom so that instead of a museum-going cycle, there is a life-long commitment to museums and learning.  

What do you think?  To share, simply click on “comments” below.  (If you are reading this from your e-mail subscription to the blog, please go to our blog's website to add a comment.)  Have a snappier name for this segment of moms?  Share that with us for as well!  

Ultra-Curious Moms, Part II, and the Latent-Curious Mom

A few weeks ago we began a series of posts about challenging and complicated moms, and we introduced the concept of the “Ultra Moms.”  These four types of moms, comprising about half of all moms in our latest study of museum-goers, were consistent in providing reasons for visiting both the museum whose survey they responded to and for visiting museums in general. (Please keep in mind that this was a study of regular museum-goers, not infrequent or non-visitors.)  Thus far we have taken closer looks at what we call the “Ultra-Fun Mom,” the "Ultra-Family-Time Mom," the “Ultra-Learning Mom,” and last week we began discussing the “Ultra-Curious Mom.”

We are continuing our discussion on Ultra-Curious Moms because they turned out to be rather interesting and complicated.  With their high levels of engagement with museums, we suspected that these women had positive experiences with museums as children.  Turns out, they did.  Compared to the other Ultra Moms, Ultra-Curious Moms reported visiting the museums the most as children, with a full quarter indicating they visited a museum 5 or more times a year versus only 18% of all moms. 

Of all moms, they were the most likely to provide us with details about their childhood memories of museums, and they were also the most likely to remember going to museums with one or both parents.  Their memories were generally more positive than other moms, and were more likely to be of art, natural history, or history museums/historic sites, indicating that as children these women went to a wide variety of museums.   (They were also less likely to be of science centers and less likely to remember hands-on activities.) 

Their memories were also quite vivid and detailed, and were more likely to include collections and objects, such as this one:

• “Whale bones hanging from the ceiling and a polar bear by the stair case.  [It] was a crazy hodge-podge of stuff in the rooms of an old house.  It was in fascinating disorder and seemed alive with history and magic.”

Overall, the memories of Ultra-Curious Moms were just, well, warm and fuzzy.  They were evocative and emotive, and just had a quality that the others moms lacked.  Their memories, and how they conveyed them, were just more . . . warmly passionate than the others.  And we suspect that those positive experiences in childhood have carried over to their adulthood and their enthusiasm and engagement with museums as adults.

Last week we also shared that Ultra-Curious Moms are generally older than the other mom segments, with older children.  We wondered if the age of the children was a factor.  That is, do the ages of her children affect Ultra-Curious Moms and their behavior, expectations, and engagement with museums?  To test this, we broke the Ultra-Curious Moms down even further, and compared their behaviors based on the ages of their children.  Turns out, Ultra-Curious Moms of children under five behave just like Ultra-Curious moms of older children, tweens, and teens.  The ages of her children simply do not appear to directly affect their museum-going behaviors. 

Even more remarkably, we found that Ultra-Curious moms of children under five were significantly more likely to visit art, history-based, and natural history museums, as well as botanical gardens/arboretums and nature centers, than the other Ultra Moms of young children, but also than other Ultra Moms of elementary, middle, and high school children.  As one Ultra-Curious mother of a very young child noted:

• “People need a playground for the mind, something tied to grasping objects and seeing how they work together with other elements.  This is why I especially love science museums and botanic gardens, but also art museums . . .”

It appears that Ultra-Curious Moms view the age appropriateness of museums for their children in a very, very different way than other moms.  That is, Ultra-Curious Moms perceive museums to be age appropriate for her children, regardless of her children’s ages, because museums, of all types, are simply age appropriate for children.  In contrast, the other Ultra Moms perceive some museums to be age appropriate for some children some of the time.  It is a very different outlook, and it may have long-term ramifications as the children of other Ultra Moms may not be experiencing as wide a variety of museums, and museum experiences, as we would like.

When we step back and think of think about our previous work on Museum Advocates and Core Visitors, it becomes clear that the Ultra-Curious Mom is a Museum Advocate, while the other Ultra Moms are Core Visitors.  And we know from our previous research that Museum Advocate moms, with their higher engagement level, are also significantly more philanthropic in their motivations to join or contribute to a museum, being much more likely than other moms to cite helping the museum improve or supporting community organizations as a reason for financially supporting the museum.

But only 9% of moms are Ultra-Curious, making this engaged (and philanthropic) segment rather small.  Attracting and engaging them may be crucial for long-term sustainability, but there are still not that many of them.  Or is that really true?  Turns out, there is a larger segment of what we call “Latent-Curious Moms.”  And, except for one thing, they behave just like the Ultra-Curious Moms.

What’s that one thing?  These moms were not consistent on their responses, and when asked why they visited this museum, the museum that sent the survey request, they did not indicate their own curiosity.  But when asked why they visit museum in general, they did indicate their own curiosity.  So curiosity is their primary motivation for visiting museums, and they tend to be positive, engaged museum goers, but the museum they responded to is leaving them, for some reason, cold.  That makes them, in our view, low-hanging fruit.  Smart, savvy, curious women who, if engaged, would behave like those fantastic Ultra-Curious moms we love, and who could present a significant segment for future engagement . . . and financial support. 

What percentage of moms fall in the “Latent-Curious” category?  Take a look:

 

	Ultra-Curious Moms	Latent-Curious Moms	Ultra-Curious + Latent-Curious Moms
Overall Museum Moms	9% of moms	18% of moms	27% of moms
Children’s Museums	2%	17%	19%
Science Centers	8%	6%	14%
Art Museums	19%	22%	41%
History-Based Museums	15%	18%	33%

As you can see, Ultra-Curious and Latent-Curious moms, together, are a rather significant segment of moms . . . a segment that enjoys museums and are likely crucial to a museum’s future sustainability through their own financial gifts, and through the engaged and curious children they raise. 

In our next post we’ll look at one final segment of moms:  the as-yet unnamed segment of moms who said they really only go to museums infrequently. 

What do you think?  To share, simply click on “comments” below.  (If you are reading this from your e-mail subscription to the blog, please go to our blog's website to add a comment.)

Ultra-Curious Moms and Museums

A few weeks ago we began a series of posts about challenging and complicated moms, and we introduced the concept of the “Ultra Moms.”  These four types of moms, comprising about half of all moms in our latest study of museum-goers, were consistent in providing reasons for visiting both the museum whose survey they responded to and for visiting museums in general. (Please keep in mind that this was a study of regular museum-goers, not infrequent or non-visitors.)  Thus far we have taken closer looks at what we call the “Ultra-Fun Mom,” the "Ultra-Family-Time Mom," and the “Ultra-Learning Mom.” 

 This week, we will begin to examine the “Ultra-Curious Mom.”  These moms consistently gave “curiosity” as a reason for visiting the museum they responded to as well as museums in general. These moms are also rather interesting, so we are going to discuss them over two separate posts.

Of our 13,000+ moms responding to the survey, 9% of moms are Ultra-Curious Moms.  But when we examine the results by museum genre, we find some differences, with Ultra-Curious Moms being:

            2% of responding children’s museum moms
            8% of science center moms
            19% of art museum moms
            15% of history-based museum moms

In an open-ended follow-up question, we asked these moms why curiosity at museums was important to them.  They said things like:

• “Exploration leads to thinking and being creative and that enriches the soul.”
•  “When you’re curious, you’re more open to learning the subject.  You become more engaged in the subject matter and it’s fun to learn.  I love seeing the light bulb go off in my kids’ heads (mine, too!)!”

And here we see the first key difference between these moms and the other segments of moms.  In the second comment, the mom inserted herself into the museum experience.  It’s all about her kids . . . but it is about her as well.  We’ll come back to that.

When we examined their responses to this question in more depth, there were certain buzzwords we kept seeing, including:  life-long learning, imagination, thinking, world, stimulate, inspire, and love.  And here again we see some key differences as these moms said “life-long learning,” not just “learning,” and these buzzwords are more emotive and deeper than the buzzwords for the other moms.  

Ultra-Curious Moms are generally older than the other mom segments, with two-thirds in their 40s or 50s.  They are the least likely to have a child under 5, and are 2 – 3 times more likely to have a high schooler.  (In the next post we’ll look at younger Ultra-Curious Moms with younger children, however, as they are quite interesting.)  A small segment of homeschooling families fall into this category.  Ultra-Curious Moms are also the most likely to visit with a spouse, 58% versus 45% of all moms.

Ultra-Curious moms are generally happy visitors, and are more positive about their experiences at museums.  And when visiting museums, like all other moms, she is looking for hands-on activities for her children, but she is also significantly more likely to seek out object and artifact-based experiences, programs and events, and direct interaction with museum staff (such as explainers, costumed interpreters, etc.).  

These moms also enjoy the widest variety of museums.  At least two-thirds of Ultra-Curious Moms enjoy all types of museums, and Ultra-Curious Moms, when compared to the other mom segments, are significantly more likely to enjoy historic sites, history museums, natural history museums, art museums, botanical gardens and arboretums, and nature centers.

Because respondents could choose more than one reason for visiting the museum whose survey they responded to, we can identify their strong secondary motivations for visiting.  But what is so interesting about Ultra-Curious Moms is that while three-quarters also cite learning opportunities for children, and half cite fun and family time as motivations for visiting, only 18% of the other Ultra Moms cite curiosity as a secondary motivation. 

That is, the Ultra-Curious Moms have a strong intrinsic motivation to visit museums, as they personally enjoy museums, but that is matched by strong extrinsic motivations on behalf of their children, for whom they want to share that innate curiosity with.  But only 18% of the other Ultra Moms indicated the intrinsic motivation of curiosity, meaning that 82% did not indicate any motivation that had to do with their own personal interest in the museum. 

Clearly, the Ultra-Curious Mom is quite different than the other Ultra Moms discussed in the past few weeks, and we have even more to share about Ultra-Curious Moms, including their childhood museum experiences, a closer examination of younger Ultra-Curious Moms with younger children, and a new segment, the Latent-Curious Mom.  We’ll delve into all of this in a post next week.

What do you think?  To share, simply click on “comments” below.  (If you are reading this from your e-mail subscription to the blog, please go to our blog's website to add a comment.)

Back to the Jurassic . . . the Museum of Jurassic Technology, That Is

During the Annual Meeting of the American Association of Museums this May, Susie Wilkening and Reach Advisors’ Fellow Jennifer Caleshu (also of the Bay Area Discovery Museum in her day job) took a trip out to the Museum of Jurassic Technology.  They were both blown away by this unique museum, and share their thoughts below.  Next time you are in Los Angeles, it is a must see.

 

Susie: 

Well.  That was a completely overwhelming experience.  The first thing that strikes me is that this museum isn’t immersive.  It is so far beyond that.  I would say it is totally enveloping.

 

Jennifer:

Exactly – it reached all the senses in a way I think few museums do. It’s so dark, (though the director said as he’s getting older, he’s turning the lights up a bit). There are sounds coming from various exhibits – some triggered by your own action, others echoing throughout. The sounds are often indistinct and muddled, adding to the sense of disorientation. There’s no clear path through – I automatically tried to go counterclockwise but even that instinct was thwarted by various passages beckoning me to the left.

 

Susie:  

I know what you mean.  My typical instinct is to logically, methodically go through . . . and you couldn’t.  It was impossible.  No floor plan is given.  The place is a maze that you just have to instinctually go through it, even though those instincts are continually thwarted – deliberately so.  This could be frustrating, but instead I felt like it was full of surprises – in a good way. 

 

Jennifer:

 I liked some of the surprises of the exhibitions – others I felt were so deliberately obtuse. It made me uncomfortable – which actually isn’t a bad thing, because some of the most interesting art experiences are risky like that. But it completely throws your conventional museum-going behavior for a loop. I found myself cautiously approaching one of the first displays of various glass tubes and bottles, all very dimly lit from above and below. Was I supposed to touch it? Was it interactive? Could I walk all the way around it or would I run into a wall in the dark (or run into another visitor!) There are few cues to appropriate behavior.

 

Susie: 

Yet for it being rather haphazard, serendipitous, obtuse, and having you question what is appropriate behavior, it is still, ultimately, a very traditional museum.  That is, it has exhibits and objects for you to look at.  But it wasn’t hands-on.  The whole atmosphere around it was, I thought, very 19^th-century natural history, in a way.  It felt . . . . Steampunk.  It was a cabinet of curiosities, that just kept becoming curiouser and curiouser as you progress through it.  It was totally sublime in the true, 18^th-century British philosophical definition as it definitely had a frisson of fear.  I think that may be what made you uncomfortable, yet not in a bad way.  So a traditional museum with quite a sublime twist. 

 

Jennifer:

The director noted that some people start laughing from the moment they walk in, and laugh their way through the exhibits; others end up violently scratching their names out of the guestbook. Either way, it’s definitely a “sticky” experience – extremely memorable. And it’s such a juxtaposition to its location on an unremarkable busy street in Culver City. Across the street there was a farmer’s market that looked to be predominantly Latino – I wonder how much of its local neighborhood it attracts? So many aspects of it seem contrary to contemporary museums – no grand spaces, no community-based programming.

 

Susie: 

It does kind of make you wonder who their “Core Visitors” are.  It isn’t touristy, and is not in a touristy part of town.  You have to want to go there.  Yet it is also very effective.  I think it works extremely well as a museum.  Though I would say they are both slightly subverting what a museum is, while they are, at the same time, completely celebrating exhibit, and collections, based museums.  So I loved it.  It is now in my top five museums ever list.  You?

 

Jennifer:

I typically prefer hands-on, interactive experiences, and content-wise, I’m really a science person more than a history person. But it’s so “out-there” and unusual that I would totally recommend it to anyone visiting L.A. It is something you just can’t not talk about – it raises so many questions (and we didn’t even get into the subject of authenticity – for that, there’s a whole book about it (Mr. Wilson's Cabinet Of Wonder: Pronged Ants, Horned Humans, Mice on Toast, and Other Marvels of Jurassic Techno logy by Lawrence Weschler).  It's a truly unique museum!

 

Have you been to the Museum of Jurassic Technology?  What did you think?  To share, simply click on “comments” below.  (If you are reading this from your e-mail subscription to the blog, please go to our blog's website to add a comment.)

Ultra-Learning Moms and Museums

A few weeks ago we began a series of posts about challenging and complicated moms, and we introduced the concept of the “Ultra Moms.”  These four types of moms, comprising about half of all moms in our latest study of museum-goers, were consistent in providing reasons for visiting both the museum whose survey they responded to and for visiting museums in general. (Please keep in mind that this was a study of regular museum-goers, not infrequent or non-visitors.)  Thus far we have taken closer looks at what we call the “Ultra-Fun Mom” and the "Ultra-Family-Time Mom."

 This week, we are examining the “Ultra-Learning Mom.”  These moms consistently gave “learning opportunities for my children” as a reason for visiting the museum they responded to as well as museums in general. 

Of our 13,000+ moms responding to the survey, 22% of moms are Ultra-Learning Moms, making this the largest segment of moms.  But when we examine the results by museum genre, we find some differences, with Ultra-Learning Moms being:

            23% of responding children’s museum moms
            26% of science center moms
            13% of art museum moms
            19% of history-based museum moms

In an open-ended follow-up question, we asked these moms why learning opportunities for children at museums was important to them.  They said things like:

• “We greatly value education and like to provide as many opportunities as possible for our children to experience hands-on learning and discovery.”
• “There is so much more that children can learn outside of the classroom, and museums offer a good environment for learning.”

When we examined their responses in more depth, there were certain buzzwords we kept seeing, including:  hands-on, learning, knowledge, exposure, round out school experience, and important.  Interestingly, Ultra-Learning Moms tended to use the words "hands-on" while Ultra-Fun Moms tended to use the word "interactive" to describe what are essentially the same activities.  We are not sure why this word choice varies, but if anyone has ideas, we would love some feedback!

Ultra-Learning Moms are pretty much evenly split with half in their 30s, and half in their 40s (there were a few in their 20s, and a few in their 50s, of course), and her children are primarily in elementary school.  A large segment of homeschooling families fall into this category.  Ultra-Learning Moms also have the most diverse households:  when identifying the race and/or ethnicity of the members of their household, only 85% said "white" and 33% indicated a minority, significantly more diverse than the overall sample and more diverse than moms overall.  

Because respondents could choose more than one reason for visiting the museum whose survey they responded to, we can identify the strong secondary motivations for visiting, which for Ultra-Learning moms include children love it and family time.  But they were significantly less likely than other moms to say museums were fun, only 40% versus 67% of all the other Ultra Moms.  

These moms are also the least-satisfied of any visitor segment we have yet to come across, including non-moms.  They are the least likely to say their needs are met and generally are the most negative.  Their written-in comments indicate a tendency for moms to equate museums with work, for both herself and for her kids.  That is, for some of these moms, museums may be yet another chore to complete, something to do because it is important for the children, but not something she particularly enjoys.  And it is the job of her children to learn something at the museum so that they can succeed in life.  While we agree with the idea that museums can provide children with excellent tools for adult life, overall this is not the most cheering outlook about museums.  

Piling on top of this negativity, of all moms the Ultra-Learning Moms are the least likely to feel that the museum is a good value, and in this economic downturn, she is the most likely to be cutting back on museum visits.  Perhaps, and this is speculation, but perhaps these moms, because museums are yet another chore to complete, are finding it all too easy to scratch them when taking a hard look at that family budget.

When visiting museums, like all other moms, she is looking for hands-on activities for her children, but she is also a bit more likely to seek out interaction with museum staff (such as explainers, costumed interpreters, etc.).   Like for the Ultra-Fun and the Ultra-Family Time Moms, her favorite museums to visit are children’s museums, zoos and aquariums, and science centers, but Ultra-Learning Moms are also more likely to visit natural history museums. 

We asked respondents to tell us about their childhood museum experiences, and we found that the Ultra-Learning moms, of all audience segments, had memories that tended to be more negative.  She was also the least likely of all the Moms to actually share with us her memory, and when she did, her memories were generally less detailed.  Ultra-Learning Moms were less likely to remember objects or history-based museums, but were more likely to remember science museums.  

While we are glad that Ultra-Learning moms value museums as great places for her children to learn, we are troubled by the how negative these moms are, by how much they seem to equate museums with work, and most of all by how these moms don't seem to take pleasure themselves in museums.  As the largest segment of moms, this is rather distressing.  

Coming up next week:  The Ultra-Curious Mom.

What do you think?  To share, simply click on “comments” below.  (If you are reading this from your e-mail subscription to the blog, please go to our blog's website to add a comment.)

Ultra-Family-Time Moms and Museums

Two weeks ago we began a series of posts about challenging and complicated moms, and we introduced the concept of the “Ultra Moms.”  These four types of moms, comprising about half of all moms in our latest study of museum-goers, were consistent in providing reasons for visiting both the museum whose survey they responded to and for visiting museums in general. (Please keep in mind that this was a study of regular museum-goers, not infrequent or non-visitors.)  Last week we took a closer look at what we call the “Ultra-Fun Mom.” 

This week, we are examining the “Ultra-Family-Time Mom.”  These moms consistently gave “family time” as a reason for visiting the museum they responded to as well as museums in general.

Of our 13,000+ moms responding to the survey,11% of moms are Ultra-Family-Time Moms.  But when we examine the results by museum genre, we find some differences, with Ultra-Family-Time Moms being:

            11% of responding children’s museum moms
            12% of science center moms
            6% of art museum moms
            10% of history-based museum moms

In an open-ended follow-up question, we asked these moms why family time at museums was important to them.  They said things like:

• “We’re in a fun environment and away from the typical distractions of phones, computers, homework, the dishes, etc.”
• “help us engage together and learn”
• “make memories and learn together”

When we examined their responses in more depth, there were certain buzzwords we kept seeing, including:  engage, together, memories, learning, fun, and family.  In particular, “together” came up quite a bit, as did “memories,” in the context of creating and building family memories.

Because respondents could choose more than one reason for visiting the museum whose survey they responded to, we can identify the secondary motivations for visiting, which for Ultra-Family-Time moms include learning opportunities for her children, her children love it, and fun. 

Ultra-Family-Time Moms are the youngest of the ultra-moms, but her children are primarily in elementary school or younger; over half have a child 7 or younger.  

Interestingly, despite the focus on family time, only 55% of these moms say they typically visit museums with a spouse or partner.  So family time appears to mean mom and the kids, not mom, dad, and the kids.  (We do know that rates of single motherhood and divorce are extremely low for college-educated women.  We’ll delve into the “where’s dad?” question in a future post.)

When visiting museums, like all other moms, she is looking for hands-on activities for her children.   Like for the Ultra-Fun Moms, their favorite museums to visit are children’s museums, zoos and aquariums, and science centers. 

We asked respondents to tell us about their childhood museum experiences, and we found that the Ultra-Family-Time moms, of all the Ultra Moms, were the most likely to remember visiting museums on a school field trip.  Her early museum memories tended to focus on social interactions with her parents or peers, and less on the museum and its objects, exhibits, or activities.

While we are glad that Ultra-Family-Time moms value museums as great places to spend time with her family, and that she values museums as terrific places of learning and fun for her children, like with the Ultra-Fun moms, these moms may not be that engaged with the content of the museum themselves.  We’ll talk more about this in upcoming posts.

Coming up next week:  The Ultra-Learning Mom.

What do you think?  To share, simply click on “comments” below.  (If you are reading this from your e-mail subscription to the blog, please go to our blog's website to add a comment.)