Museum coolness: creating the desire to revisit

ABSTRACT

Museum coolness may contribute to deepening the relationship between visitors and museums. The current research aims to identify the characteristics most associated with the museum coolness index, and empirically analyse atmospheric cues, authentic pride, and passionate desire to revisit as constructs related to the museum coolness nomological network. The current study used Amazon’s Mechanical Turk to recruit 308 UK adult participants who frequently visit museums. Participants completed a structured questionnaire with the scales of the constructs and the socio-demographic variables. The findings suggest that being considered aesthetic, authentic, energetic, high status, and useful are the most relevant characteristics to form the museum coolness index. The museum’s décor, permanent displays, facilities, and colours are the most important cues appreciated by visitors to consider a museum as cool. As outcomes of museum coolness, the current study empirically demonstrates the role of authentic pride and passionate desire to revisit. Managerial implications and future research are also suggested.

KEYWORDS:

• Museum coolness
• atmospheric cues
• authentic pride
• passionate desire to revisit
• museum visitors

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sandra Maria Correia Loureiro

Sandra Maria Correia Loureiro, Associate Professor at Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL) and Business Research Unit (BRU-IUL). She is the director of the PhD in Management, with specialization in Marketing and Tourism Management. Her current research interests include relationships, tourism marketing and technologies related issues, such as VR, AR and AI. Her papers have been published in a variety of peer-reviewed journals that include Journal of Marketing, Journal of Retailing, Tourism Management, Journal of Business Research, International Journal of Hospitality Management, Tourism Management Perspectives, Tourism Recreation Research, Current Issues in Tourism, Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services and Online Information Review. She also has won several awards as outstanding reviewer.

Teresa Maria Blanco

Teresa Maria Blanco, Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL) and Business Research Unit (BRU-IUL). She holds a Master in science in Marketing at ISCTE and Stockholm university and she is a PhD candidate in management at ISCTE-Instituto Universitário de Lisboa. She participated in several internships, such has Bose corporation. Teresa Blanco has two conference communications at EuroMed and Gamma-Global Marketing Conference.