Arts in Italy: development through experiential marketing. Some empirical evidences

Growing competitive pressure, increasingly demanding clients and financial instability are forcing cultural organizations to look for innovative management tools to remain successful in the market. The experiential approach and/or experiential marketing seem to offer an answer to the new challenges. This paper explores how experiential marketing is used by cultural organizations to retain and develop their audience base. Experiential methods and tools used by these organizations are studied through observation of the internet sites of 20 organizations in the cultural domain. The paper offers a picture of the experiential positioning of cultural organizations in the analyzed sectors. Comparisons within each sector and intra-sectors provide evolutionary cues