Studying the association of online brand importance with museum visitors: An application of the semantic brand score

TL;DR

This study investigates how online brand importance, measured through the Semantic Brand Score, correlates with museum visitor growth over ten years, highlighting the significance of online engagement for attracting visitors.

Contribution

It applies the Semantic Brand Score to analyze online discussions and links brand importance to museum visitor increases, offering a novel approach to museum marketing strategies.

Findings

Higher online posting volume correlates with increased visitors.

Diversity and connectivity in online discussions predict visitor growth.

Controlling for sentiment is less effective than fostering information richness.

Abstract

This paper explores the association between brand importance and growth in museum visitors. We analyzed 10 years of online forum discussions and applied the Semantic Brand Score (SBS) to assess the brand importance of five European Museums. Our Naive Bayes and regression models indicate that variations in the combined dimensions of the SBS (prevalence, diversity and connectivity) are aligned with changes in museum visitors. Results suggest that, in order to attract more visitors, museum brand managers should focus on increasing the volume of online posting and the richness of information generated by users around the brand, rather than controlling for the posts' overall positivity or negativity.