Opening time research for London galleries
Opening time research for London galleries
By
Morris Hargreaves McIntyre
The study, involving nine London galleries, sought to quantify and understand the evening market for galleries, providing demographic and psychographic profiling data alongside attender motivations and the relationship with daytime visits. The data also cross-referenced findings from participating venue to venue, and analysed marketing activity reach and appeal by segment, and opportunities to position galleries as more social destinations. A benefits matching model (between audience segments and galleries) emerged from the findings.
There is a group of mainly younger people who are seeking novel social opportunities that are not exclusively centred around bars and drinking. They see galleries as offering a new social attraction with an emphasis on style.
At the same time, by switching the emphasis to a social rather than cultural event, those individuals who are attracted to social events in galleries see them as routes through to introducing friends to galleries who might not usually see themselves as gallery visitors. Others identify these social events as informal opportunities to enjoy the gallery in a less pressurised or elitist environment, where there is no presumption of existing knowledge and therefore see them as a good opportunity for introducing new attenders.
