Museum Store Association Retail Industry Report, 2014 Edition

Financial, Operations, Salary, and Best Practices Information for the Nonprofit Retail Industry

Museum Store Association

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9781629580357
• eBook ISBN:
  9781315423951
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Retail Industry
• Index: Business

The 2014 MSA Retail Industry Report provides benchmarks, gives insight, and enables you to make smart business decisions to maximize sales in your museum store. The report includes over 200 tables, including comparisons by geography, size, gross sales, and museum type with which to compare your own store. Tips concerning best practices in stocking, merchandising, and staffing, based on hard survey data, are provided. Information on web sales, catalogues, wholesaling, and special events are also included.

Section 1: Institution & Store Profile

MSA Membership

This study was designed for any museum/institution store and was identified as an industry survey to participants, not an MSA member survey. The majority of stores contacted for the survey (62%) were not current MSA members. There was confusion among some stores, and several contacts asked to be removed from the study because they were not MSA members. Even though a larger percentage of those contacted were non-members, the majority of stores responding to the survey (87%) were MSA members. The following table shows the MSA membership status of all survey respondents. The second table shows the member status of respondents according to MSA records at the start of the survey.

Are you currently a member of the Museum Store Association?

Current member status

Data Analysis

The wide disparity in responses from members and non-members should be considered when evaluating survey results and planning future studies. Given the number of members contacted for the survey (908) and the number that responded (262), the response rate for members was 28.9%. With many more non-members being contacted (1,505) for the survey, and just 39 responses from that group, the response rate for non-members was less than 3%. There is nothing in the survey data to indicate that non-member responses were significantly different from member responses. It may be that a different approach is needed to get more non-members to contribute industry data.

About the Museum/Institution

Museum Type

Art museums made up more than one-third (34.6%) of respondents, and were double the size of the next largest group, History museums at 16.3%. Historic sites were the only other group representing more than 10% of the sample size and had sufficient numbers for comparison as a distinct category. Responses for all 20 museum types are shown in the following table.

What best describes the type of museum / institution with which you are associated? If more than one category applies, please select the one that is more specific or for which you are better known.

Industry Comparative Data

Geographic regions and annual sales levels are common factors in comparative analysis across all industries. The type of museum/institution provides an industry specific comparison of survey results. When appropriate, survey results will be shown based on the type of museum/institution for categories with a sufficient number of responses. For those museum types representing less than 10% of the sample, an “other” category has been created, as comparisons with any one of these groups on its own is not statistically viable. The following pie chart shows the percentage of respondents by type of museum that is typically used for this report. The number of responses is shown in parentheses by each label.

Survey Respondents by Type of Museum

While the type of museum/institution is a critical factor in store identity and operations, survey results provide very little distinction in this area. By category, there are only comparative results specific to Art museums and History museums/Historic sites. It is important to keep both the percentage of responses and the actual numbers of responses received in mind when reviewing survey data. These differences can be a factor when analyzing results.

Data Analysis

For future surveys/research, it is recommended that options for the types of museums/institutions be much more limited. Rather than listing very specific types of museums, broader terms should be used for grouping museums into more general categories. For example, science could include science museums, and natural history, air & space, and anthropology museums; nature centers/parks could include gardens, arboretums, and outdoor parks/national parks, zoos, and aquariums. Such groupings under broader terms would be more useful in obtaining sufficient data across categories and more practical in reporting comparative data back to institutions and the general public. Art museums in this survey show a successful application of this concept. They were a single category of respondent even though the museums themselves represented very different types of art forms, styles, and periods.

Population / Market Served

Museum stores that responded to the survey were more commonly located in areas with greater populations, as evident in the following table. This pattern likely reflects the overall market.

Select the approximate population of the market area in which your museum / institution is located.

In comparing these different populations to the types of museums responding to the survey, you see a noticeable shift in the types of museums by market size. Below is a graph showing survey responses by market population and the largest percentages of museum types in each market group.

The next graph shows the actual numbers of responses for ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Introduction to the MSA 2014 Retail Industry Report
• SECTION 1: INSTITUTION & STORE PROFILE
• SECTION 2: STORE FINANCIALS
• SECTION 3: STORE STAFF
• SECTION 4: MERCHANDISING & MARKETING EFFORTS
• Appendix A - Income Data by Sales Range
• Appendix B - Copy of Survey Instrument