The Museum through the eyes of youth: discussion on the reputation

On November 12 this year, the State Hermitage Museum held a conference dedicated to the reputation of museums - Studying Museum Reputation (RUSSIA 2021). The main speakers were professors of various business schools from Spain and the Netherlands, mayor of Malaga, reputation researcher Van Riel and many others. The issues of reputation management of both individual museums and the cultural community as a whole were raised at the conference. More specifically, the factors affecting the reputation of the museum and the development of the brand in the field of art were discussed.

he HSE Laboratory of Cultural Economics took part in the conference. On the basis of the laboratory, we, 4th-year students of International Business and Management, Maria Krylova and Anatoly Talanenko together with the supervisor of our course work A.K. Polomarchuk and the head of the Laboratory V.E.Gordin, prepared a report that was based on a course paper written by us in the 3rd year.

The main focus of our research was to find an answer to the question: what does the State Hermitage Museum look like in the eyes of youth?

We believe that for any company, reputation is a key element along with financial success and the quality of services. Museums are no exception, on the contrary, being a non-profit organization, they should pay special attention to reputation and brand in general. It is not difficult to guess that the image of the company can vary in the eyes of different groups. Adults have one perception, youth another, and for very young children - the third. This is the important goal of each museum - to properly form a reputation for each of the groups. We chose youth for our analysis because they are the future and the future audience of the museum. Organizations should think ahead and cultivate a loyal audience for their brand.