The idea of an experience, as described in The Experience Economy, matches a lot of what has been said in other readings about museums. Primarily, that the value comes from a combination of tangible and intangible elements. I thought the Geek Squad example was especially interesting where it was only the outfit worn and the way the employees referred to themselves that elevated their business from being strictly a service to an experience.

Amusement parks are one of the most obvious examples of selling an experience as a business model and I was surprised that they were only briefly mentioned here. One aspect that stands out about amusement parks is the way that some really run with the idea of eliminating negative cues. Disney has shown particular dedication to this principle. They often have staff remain in character even when conducting monetary transactions or doing administrative work and even build certain sections of their parks set into the ground to carefully control what guests are able to see around them. All of this is meant to preserve the feeling of immersion in the theme or setting of the park area. As The Experience Economy suggests, this seems to strongly contribute to their guests enjoyment.

Overall, the broad demographic data in What Makes a Satisfying Museum Experience? was unsurprising. In fact, in the introduction to the paper the authors acknowledged that there is “a widespread assumption” that museum visitors were typically “well-educated, high-income, older women” which is more or less what their own data ended up showing. However, among the more detailed results there were some interesting observations. The data showed that repeat visitors only reported enjoying the museum slightly more than first time visitors but that first time visitors and repeat visitors tended to prefer different aspects of the museum experience. I would love to see this sort of study applied on a larger scale and to a combination of locally focused and more internationally focused museums.