To be able to holiday overseas as a guest speaker on museum stakeholders and audience engagement while reading a book on museum marketing was a great gift. The rich case studies that I found in Museum Marketing: Competing in the Global Marketplace provided a useful contrast to challenges described by a museum client in the United States.

To review Museum Marketing I employed 'three-hat thinking', reflecting the roles I play in the museum sector: academic, consultant and cultural consumer. As an independent scholar, I appreciated the diverse contributions from museum professionals across Australia, England, Germany, Singapore, Scotland and New Zealand. While most contributors are university-based, a sprinkling of museum professionals keeps the book 'real and applied'. Museum marketing is described on a spectrum that ranges from the Vietnam Museum of Ethnology's lack of experience conducting research into audience needs (due to lack of familiarity with the topic and lack of staff), to extensive research on leisure participation in the United Kingdom with detailed insights into who goes to museums, who makes the decision to go, and motivational factors (education, entertainment and socialising in a group).

The book is divided into four parts, with six essays or case studies in each part. The four parts explore museum marketing, audience experience, revenue and retail, and marketing culture. It would have been helpful if the introduction contained an outline of basic marketing principles. This should include a simple model, such as those described in two Australia Council publications, Marketing the Arts: A Study of Marketing and Audience Development by Australian Arts Organisations (1997) and Miles Ahead: Arts Marketing that Works in Regional Australia (1998). Although there are several definitions of marketing, it would also help if Museum Marketing started by defining the difference between marketing (researching what an audience wants in terms of product and service) and publicity (promoting the product or service designed to meet audience needs). The 'five Ps of marketing' — price, product, place, position, people — were not introduced until page 40, and the 'seven Ps of service marketing' — product, price, promotion, place, people, physical evidence, and process — were introduced on page 142. It can be seductive to describe 'our' museum exhibit (or another museum's successes or follies) rather than analysing exactly what happens when marketing theory, such as the 'five Ps', is put into museum practice.

Ruth Rentschler's overview of changes in museum marketing is great and should have been positioned as the first contribution in Part 1. This would ease a reader's alarm over e-commerce descriptions with reference to websites as 'marketing' (when they aren't). According to Nick Kotsomitis, a marketing research analyst with the Australian Marketing and Social Research Society, 'a website is a communication channel for an organization. If the organization is into retailing, the website is a form of advertisement, which should be based on a well-researched marketing strategy. A website has to be interactive, soliciting customer feedback, to qualify as marketing'.

A museum's website may get 2000 'hits' a day but what does this actually mean? A 2007 report from the Australian Bureau of Statistics found that while an increasing number of homes have Internet access (35 per cent in 2001 compared to 63 per cent in 2007), income and education influence access. Households with income greater than $2000 per week are three times more likely to have broadband internet connections than families on less than $600 per week (www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS ABS Ref 8146.0.55.001). Museums are becoming increasingly reliant on e-commerce — websites, online collections and membership newsletters — to compete in a global marketplace. The e-bias creates market segmentation by limiting communication to audiences who can afford broadband access. This contributes to a key challenge described by Amelia Bartak: 'While the body of research on users is growing, the percentage of museums that conduct user needs assessment relating to any technology-supported experience remains very low; only 12% of museums in the USA are doing so' (p. 31).

Interestingly, Museum Marketing reveals the historical tension between museums, managers, and marketing is still causing problems. In 1994–97, when I was conducting research into the museum director's role in change management, Thomas Krens's directorship of the Guggenheim in New York was being vilified by some in the museum sector as cashing in on crass commercialism. It's disappointing to sense the same tension a decade later in Derrick Chong's criticism of the Guggenheim Model (pp. 207–12) and Martha Phillips's and Daragh O'Reilly's questioning of whether cultural organisations should concern themselves with branding (p. 191). Branding is an essential marketing strategy. I hope concerns over the 'rise of managerialism' (p. 211) and 'marketing has to do with products, and if you say, let us change the product to fit what the audience wants, that makes everybody nervous' (p. 205) are historical references rather than current issues.

Focusing energy on audience research is increasingly important for organisations competing in the global marketplace. Some of my favourite insights in Museum Marketing came from Suzette Major and Tamarisk Sutherland, who described the marriage of a business mindset with artistic ventures — a major change in New Zealand. Mark O'Reilly's description of the New Model Army rock band exhibition in England introduced the notion of 'emotional politics' through the curator's active inclusion of the band's family members and fans in the development of the exhibition. The collaboration shifted the museum visitor's perspective from being a viewer to becoming a member of the museum 'family', using art and artefacts to build a sense of community. Fiona Mclean's and Mark O'Neill's Glasgow case study on audience development was a reality test — the most pressing issue for museum marketing is the relationship between museums and their audiences. They describe how the Glasgow Museums have used the largest education and access team of any museum in Britain to align audience evaluation with museum product development, social inclusion with community development, and the visitor's need for meaning-making with museum storytelling. Carol Scott's ongoing commitment to audience evaluation in Australia underscores the need for museums to understand audience values, choices, and the importance of relationships. Anne-Marie Hede's emphasis on branding and the need for stakeholder input (visitor research) is critical because brand equity is built over time and the market must become familiar with the assets of the brand (museum) before its equity becomes evident (or relevant). Alix Slater reminds us that despite an increase in visitors to museums in London, participation across all social groups has not grown at an equal rate, 'Although it may not be "politically correct" to say so, higher economic social groups (middle class) are likely to be the core audience for museums in the future' (p. 100). Stefan Toepler's and Volker Kirchberg's research on museum merchandising produced a surprising conclusion: while shops, stores and cafes are useful (and visitors want them) they don't actually make a profit for museums.

As I turned the last page of Museum Marketing, I reflected on my own experiences with audience research described in the book Museum Philosophy for the 21st Century. Deep and lasting memories for a museum visitor are anchored in socio-emotional connections. Using hospitality industry marketing research as a baseline, the museum audience research showed that a visitor's emotional experience (what feels good) creates (or breaks) a fundamental bond with the museum. Successful museums will understand the visitor's need for socio-emotional connection and use the rich sharing in Museum Marketing to create a dynamic balance between commercial issues, social mission, and audience engagement.

Sherene Suchy is a consultant in individual and organisational development based in Canberra and the author of several publications on museum leadership.