Defining special events from a gallery visitor perspective

In their endeavour to become more visitor-focused, galleries are staging an increasing number of special events. Special events enable galleries to inspire and attract new visitors, and encourage people to become regular visitors. With the increased use of special events however, it is important that galleries develop an awareness of how their visitors understand and respond to such events. This paper describes a current, continuing research project investigating visitors’ perceptions of special events in galleries. Stemming from a previous study that qualitatively explored this issue, the current study uses a quantitative methodology to build on, and further support the findings from the qualitative study. This paper details the set of categories that were developed from the initial qualitative study, and explains how the quantitative part of the study has been designed to test the importance and accuracy of those categories. The categories represent the perceptions visitors have of what defines a special event at a gallery and how special events differ from a gallery’s day-to-day program. While this paper presents a brief overview of the initial findings emerging from a preliminary analysis of the quantitative date, the focus is on explaining and subsequently reflecting upon the suitability of the quantitative methods used to supplement the qualitative research. The statistical data analysis methods used to interpret the questionnaire data, factor analysis and conjoint analysis, and their applications are therefore explained and reflected upon