An Analysis of Audience Studies for the Performing Arts in America Part I: The Audience Profile
GENERAL
This article is divided into two parts. Part I, which is featured in this issue, is an analysis of audience surveys which sketches an outline of the audience profile and describes its relative position in the leisure marketplace. Who are the people that attend performing arts events? What effect do pricing policies, alternative entertainments, audience-building efforts, macroeconomic and political shifts and other factors have on the size, make-up, and behavior of this group?
These are fundamental marketing questions for managers of performing arts organizations, but until recently we have had little data on audiences with which to rest commonly held assumptions about the marketplace. The need for such information becomes more acute when we consider the shrinking of unearned income resources for the nonprofit arts industry, a trend which seems virtually assured for the foreseeable future, and which necessitates a shift in emphasis toward the source of our earned income: the audience. If the dramatically changing resource equation for the arts is to yield a positive result in years to come, we must acquire a detailed understanding of our markets, of the behavior of the marketplace, and of the science of marketing.
CONTENTS
Outlining the audience profile.
Demographic descriptors.
Gender.
Age.
Income.
Occupation.
Education.
Ethnic and racial variables.
Psychographic descriptors.
Life cycle.
Social class.
Life style.
Geographic descriptors.
A matter of taste: the audience by art form and within art forms.
Theatre.
Orchestral music.
Opera.
Dance.
Taste publics.
Cross-over and frequency.
Market size.
See p. 86, v. 13, n. 3, Fall 1983 for a correction notice about this article.
