Museum bookshops are commercial activities located inside the museum, usually at the end of a tour of the rooms. These shopping areas allow you to buy gadgets, works of art, objects of various kinds and sizes reminiscent of the place you have just visited.
Museum bookshop management
Museum shop managers must have a special preparation as well as a natural curiosity and love for art. To be sure of success with their business, museum merchandisers must be aware of 5 fundamental points. Now let’s analyze them one at a time to understand them better and use them fruitfully for your business.
1. Love for art
Whoever chooses to open and run a museum shop must be a person who loves what he does not only for the issue of commercial sales or for the human relationship with always different people, but above all for what he sells. This means that the particular character of the articles dealt with concern the artistic and cultural world, the manager must therefore be able to understand and explain what he is proposing to his customers explaining the link with the museum.
2. Marketing skills
Managers of gift shops within museums must have a good knowledge of marketing and promotional communication techniques. The ability to arrange every single item by setting up the shop in such a way that users find exactly what they need at that moment, is fundamental to obtain a good turnover for museum bookshops. At the checkout, for example, key rings, candies, drinks, pens and small objects with a brand dedicated to the museum will be placed.
3. Communication skills
Communication is not new for trade, but it is important that we do not forget that this action should not only concern the direct relationship with the customer. What are we talking about? We are referring to indirect promotional communication such as that which is applied through social media and the web in general. The museum shop manager must therefore remember to develop a well-structured site in addition to entertaining himself on the various socials by offering his fans a series of information, photographs, videos dedicated to the museum and shop gadgets.
4. Variations on the theme
The museum giftshop cannot sell items that have nothing to do with the environment. Souvenirs and giftware in the shop must be dedicated to the museum and its contents. However, managers can use their imagination to vary a little bit the supply of the shop in order to offer more variety to their customers. It is also necessary to think about the average age of the people who pass through the museum dedicating to them gifts, snacks and drinks suitable for the target group. One should never forget the children who are often the main reason why visitors shop at the shop.
5. Goal of the museum bookshop
Museum merchandisers must never lose sight of the goal of the museum bookshop, i.e. turnover. Once this objective is clear in the minds of the operators, they operate in such a way as to achieve ever greater economic development. To do this, promotional campaigns can be implemented with the aim of encouraging users to buy more objects by spreading the brand. Such offers establish a collaboration between the parties that satisfy both: the customer and the bookshop manager.