Leisure Style and Attitudes Toward Theatre Attendance
Open Access
Author:
Shultz, Mark James
Area of Honors:
Marketing
Degree:
Bachelor of Science
Document Type:
Thesis
Thesis Supervisors:
Jeffrey Michael Kukitz, Thesis Supervisor Jennifer Chang Coupland, Thesis Honors Advisor
Keywords:
theatre arts theatre marketing arts marketing broadway market research
Abstract:
The theatre industry carries significant cultural and economic importance in American society today. Recently, theatre participation across the country was found to be declining at a statistically significant rate – the first time any statistically significant change has been observed in theatre audiences since 1985 (Iyengar, 2013). In light of this news, theatre marketers must strive even harder to understand their target audiences, what is important to them, and how they prefer to be reached. This paper examines the American public through the lens of their leisure attitudes, interests and opinions. The market is segmented by these “leisure styles”, and segment membership is then used as a predictor of expected future arts attendance and desire to increase rate of attendance. Segments with statistically significant positive regression coefficients are then analyzed by importance ratings of various aspects of attendance as well as preferred information sources to uncover the optimal marketing strategy for communicating to the theatre target markets.
