Classical Music Audience Research - Segmentation by Music Preferences

The audience is at the center of attention of every cultural institution, and a perfect knowledge of it gives cultural organizations a competitive advantage. Researchers have been studying the cultural audience for more than fifty years, yet some topics are still not sufficiently elaborated and, moreover, new topics are emerging. This dissertation focuses on the research of the classical music audience from the point of view of their preferences in music and selected factors that influence these preferences. Since classical music audience research is a relatively specific area within arts marketing, much attention is paid to systematic literature review in the dissertation. A summary mapping of the entire research area in the field of classical music audiences was carried out using bibliometric analysis and document similarity analysis. The results of the research provide the basis for the further research and theoretical support for the formulation of research questions. The empirical part of the dissertation includes the analysis of three types of data – secondary data from longitudinal research on consumer behavior, primary data obtained during the own questionnaire survey and secondary data of three cultural institutions. The dissertation enriches the existing literature, among other things, by finding out how the audience behavior is influenced by the popularity of the artist, the type of program or the fact whether the visitor goes to the concerts alone or accompanied. Classical music audience members are educated, older, and women predominate among them. A preference for a smaller number of genres and a preference for highbrow genres among people over 65 years of age have been demonstrated. Also, people who go to concerts alone prefer highbrow genres. Higher education is associated with a preference for more genres, but not with a preference for highbrow genres. No influence of gender on the number or type of preferred genres was demonstrated. Other contributions of the dissertation include the segmentation of the Czech classical music audience, the identification of frequent patterns in the behavior of the Czech classical music audience, and the data ecosystem model of a cultural organization.