SNA: Audience as a network

SNA : Audience as a network

Philippe Gardeil

Background

Knowing the cut of subsidies for culture in most of the European governments, cultural managers have to aim more profitability in their institutions; in this context, the audience, in live performance industries, becomes the main source of revenues, and thus the central issue for managers.

Until now, some studies tried to analyse the nature of the audience in theatres and opera houses. In these researches, the members of the audience are mostly studied through general demographic attributes and their interests. If these data are essential, especially for a marketing approach, they can be restrictive if the audience is only considered as sum of independent members; we can, for instance, assume that an audience is also made of networks, in which each member is more or less strongly connected to another.

Several observations lead to this point; first of all, only few members of the audience come alone for attending a show, they mostly are invited by someone or are inviting someone. Thus a theatre or an opera performance is not only a service delivery but also a social activity. The “initiatory” aspect, needed to appreciate the performances, should also be considered.

It is also remarkable, when attending several shows in the same city, that a consistent proportion of the audience remains the same: this loyalty is, of course, for the art itself, but maybe also a loyalty to other members of the audience (a “group” effect).

At last, it can be assume that a large part of the audience is connected, at least at the second or third degree.

Central Question

Can a social network analysis of the audience lead to a better efficiency in marketing activities of theatres and opera houses?

Hypothesis and objectives

·      Understanding the audience network should help theatres and opera houses to be more efficient in their marketing activities (profiling target group, identify high “opinion leadership” actors, set up a reference based system, focus on some existing groups, focus marketing expenses on efficient media and thus save some useless marketing campaign expenses, etc.).

·      Reinforcing connections between the members of the audience should directly benefit to the theatre and opera houses, increasing the “indirect loyalty” (first for the other members, and thus for the performances).

Methodology and attributes needed

This analysis can include in a first step a qualitative survey, to select or confirm the most important criteria (e.g. by interviews), and in the second step a quantitative approach, with questionnaires designed for members of audience.

This questionnaire should first include general demographic information of the audience:

-       Age

-       Gender

-       Geographic information

-       Level of study

-       Socio-professional group

-       Professional sector

-       Interests/hobbies

-       Etc.

Then, the questions should focus on connections among the audience:

-       How did they discover theatre/opera?

-       Alone/with someone? (Here, the respondent could name these people, in order to draw a network map later)

-       Always with the same people?

-       Do they like to go in performance alone?

-       The three last times you went to a show, was it: alone? Their idea?

-       How many new “performance friends” have you met in theatres/operas?

-       Did they know each other before? (These two questions help to measure if audience creates group or if groups existed before)

-       Etc.

In the best case, the results could be combined in a network map, and figures for each respondent like betweeness or reference value could be compared to each other, while some clusters could be identified.

During the analysis of the data, the following questions should be kept in mind:

Who are the main actors? Who are the followers?

Which link with other activities?

What kind of clusters can be designed and what are their role in the network?

How can we use these results to optimize marketing efficiency?

Possible limitations

The main problem of this study could be the number of respondents. Indeed, for this survey to be really interesting, the audience of several theatres or opera houses in the same city should be analysed, which is maybe not realistic. Another problem is the willingness to answer for each member of the audience: for the study to be efficient, every member should answer the questionnaire (for instance for the reciprocity of every connection). So we can assume that the study can be biased by the low answering rate.