Optimisation / UK / Customer Experience
Value placed on arts and cultural institutions
"The results of the research enabled the government, other public bodies, and arts and cultural organisations to understand the value that the public places on arts and cultural institutions."
Business issue
Pre-existing willingness to pay (WTP) values have already been estimated for visitors and non-visitors at a museum in York.
A major improvement to the building structure, exhibition space, entrance hall, and internal facilities were planned, and WTP values were needed to predict how this change in service provisions were likely to impact actual likelihood to (re)visit the museum. Alongside this, the museum also wanted to understand the public value of the specific proposed improvements to the service offering at the institution.
Our solution
An online survey was conducted using a panel of adult residents in the UK. This contained a sample size of approximately 900 respondents, split between visitors and non-visitors.
Employing the probability of visiting or revisiting, instead of a financial attribute, a conjoint method was utilised. This approach was used to establish a link between the marginal WTP and the marginal fluctuations in the likelihood score. This comparison was made in relation to the status quo (existing level) versus the improvement scenario, given that a baseline WTP was already determined.
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Impact
A key output from the conjoint analysis was a ‘Utility’ score that was derived for each attribute level and describes the relative desirability of each level, enabling customer behaviour to be predicted.
From the resulting analysis, two sets of likelihood scores were produced, one for the status quo, and one for the improvement scenario. This allowed a direct comparison of the average likelihood scores for each option, whilst also enabling the government, other public bodies, and arts and cultural organisations to understand the value that the public places on arts and cultural institutions.
