New Service Development Proposal for Athens Archeological Museum

M.Sc in Marketing Management
DELIVERING CUSTOMER
FOCUSED SERVICES
New Service Development Proposal
for Athens Archeological Museum
SPYROS LANGKOS
ID: 100285557
Tutor: Mr. Roumeliotis George
Athens, May 2013
Academic Year 2012 – 2013

New Service Development for AMA | 2
This study concentrates on presenting the
development of an idea for a new service for the
National Archeological Museum of Athens. The main
focus here, is to state how this new proposed
service is consistent with the museum brand and in
what way it will add value to the customers.

1. TABLE OF CONTENTS
Pages
1. Contents....................................................................................... 3
2. Acknowledgements....................................................................4
3. Introuction ...............................................................................5
4. Executive Summary...................................................................6
5. Analysis of Environment and Existing Service Offering................... .8
6. Reasearch & Observation – Justification of New Service............... .11
7. New Service Developement Process.......................................... .13
8. Conclusion & Recommendations ............................................... .14
9. Appendix............................................................................... .15
10. Bibliography .......................................................................... .18

2. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The development and the implementation of this report is made possible
by the appreciation of my family and friends and also to the help of
Andrew, the library bookkeeper. I would like to thank, our module teacher
Mr. George Roumeliotis for his guidance so that we can bring closure to
our assignment work.
I will also like to thank my colleagues for their interesting exchange of
information and knowledge upon the subject. They gave me very clear
insights and views upon my stated arguments.
.

3. INTRODUCTION
3.1 Museum history
AMA is the first national archaeological museum in Greece and was
established by prime minister of Greece Ioannis Kapodistrias in Aigina in
1829. Subsequently the archaeological collection was relocated to a
number of exhibition places until 1858, when an international architectural
competition was announced for the location and the architectural design of
the new museum.
The current location was proposed and the construction of the museum's
building began in 1866 and was completed in 1889 using funds from the
Greek Government, the Greek Archaeological Society and the society of
Mycenae. Major benefactors were Eleni Tositsa who donated the land for
the building of the museum, and Demetrios and Nikolaos Vernardakis
from Saint Petersburg who donated a large amount for the completion of
the museum.
The National Archaeological Museum houses some of the most important
artifacts from a variety of archaeological locations around Greece from
prehistory to late antiquity. It is considered one of the great museums in
the world and contains the richest collection of artifacts from Greek
antiquity worldwide. It is situated in the Exarcheia area in central Athens
between Epirus Street, Bouboulinas Street and Tositsas Street while its
entrance is on the Patission Street adjacent to the historical building of
the Athens Polytechnic university (AMA website,2012).

4. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
In recent years museums have changed from being predominantly
custodial institutions to becoming increasingly focused on audience
attraction. New emphasis is placed on museum-audience interactions. This
change in the purpose and priorities of museums has impacted upon the
nature of museum service context and delivery of service products
(A.Gilmore, 2002).
This report aims towards the development of a new service offering for
the Athens Archeological Museum. Our proposal, is to facilitate
innovation and embrace the ongoing trend which is on the rise, to
update museums technological standards by introducing services
concerning web interconnectivity and interaction of the museum
with it’s visitors.
Through this consistent process the visitors of the museum will be able to
gain a better and dynamic experience of the museum exhibition-
speciments-people. Moreover, they will enhance their after-service
expectations and become a positive source of information towards future
traveller’s and act as ambassador of the museum brand. The main focus
here is to successfully merge heritage & tradition with modern
technological advancements, without affecting the image of the museum.
Traditionally, the prime function of the museum has been to gather,
preserve and stuy objects. Our plan is to maintain a data-collection focus.
Today’s museum role has been upgrated. They are not only the
gatekeepers of heritage and tradition, but have transformed to an active
community enforcer. Therefore, in this digital era strengthening museums
through information and data-sharing they will be better able to meet
both demanding bottomlines of sustainability (financial solvency and
mission execution).

Although this is a future-oriented approach, the museum may present a
gap between the desired performance and the actual resuts, due to the
nature of AMA as a professional bureaucracy and prior non-profit
organization, controlled and authorized by the Greek ministry of Culture.
The emphasis has been on improving the information technology
infastractures and the professionalism of service providers within an
integrated framework, implemented through a wide range of digital and
web-bsed enchancements, in orer to provide special projects and form
new programmes-events-exhibitions (C.Goulding, 2009).

5. ANALYSIS OF ENVIRONMENT &
EXISTING SERVICE OFFERING
5.1 Background
With an annual budget of some €4 million and € 2.5 million current
(variable) costs, the National Archaeological Museum in Athens has 170
permanent staff, along with some 100 temporary staff (mostly guards). Of
the 800,000 annual visitors to the museum, some 500,000 are
international.
The museum’s treasures include a panorama of Greek civilisation from the
Neolithic era until the late Roman period (6800 BC – 4th century AD),
viewed through high quality artefacts, a number of which have world
renown. (Leonardo Da Vinci Programme, MU.S.EU.M. Project , 2006).
5.2 AMA service offering
The core and augmented elements of the museum services are:
Education:
The education of the public is central to the entire museum service. The
scope and range of the core collection has a direct impact upon the choice
and quality of service to visitors.
Accessibility:
includes ease of use of the physical facilities and the range of offerings.
Communication:
includes the nature an the scope of interactions, entertainment and
interpretation. (Wilson & Ziethalm, 2012).
The museum is located in an accessible area that is in the heart of the city
center which is perceived by locals to be “a bad neibourhood”. Some
times, in the annual period of a year, special exhibitions (like the
Antikythira Mechanism Exhibition during this season) are often used to
iniate additional events. For example, the above mentioned event has
gathered a lot of publicity for the museum, fundraisings, sponshorships
and advertising placement due to it’s significant historical value and
uniqueness. It possesses a good architecture and environmental friendly
souroundings. It also offers time for leisure activity through coffee and
walking. The interior is simple and the scenery set is circular. There are
two front-desk for customer service, a restaurant downsters and a library
upon the 2nd
floor. All these are offered with a relatively affordable cost.
The museum service is delivere in a physical environment or site which
econpasses the land or building area, shape, lighting, means orienting the
visitor, waiting, queues, crowing and methods of stimulating interest and
engagement (Goulding, 2000).

All the above are consistent as meaningfull service encounters to a small
and not repetitive niche (elderly people/special scientific groups of
researchers) of the wider audience, that is constantly deteriorating though
the ages.
5. 3 Museum environment:
Modernn Consumers:
Nowadays, visitors are becoming incresingy demanding and judgemental.
The Generation X of modern customer is not still dominant in the overall
population. On the contrary the next genearation is on the rise, those who
we call the “Millenials (generation Y).
These emerging new consumer power is:
 Tech Savy
 Public service motivated
 Entrepreneurial
 Entitled and “over-eucated”
 Community oriented
 Connected
 Largest population group in history
Numerical impact:
74% of them believe technology makes life easier.
33% is more likely to purchase if somrthing has a Facebook page.
(Boston Group Consulatant, 2009)
Audience:
Social media accounts for ¼ of the time spent on the internet.
Mobile usage and search has been skyrocketed. They are not nly young,
also 1/5 are 65+ have social accounts.
The visitor decision-making process is an important factor for choice and
preference of a museum. Schedule, cost, travel distance, reputation, ease
of access play major role towards the fulfillment of the proper decision.

5.4 PEST Analysis
The AMA Museum is a governmental institution with a director and nine
departments (four collections of antiquities, archaeometry, conservation,
technical, public relations, buro/economic), none of which deals – at least
for the present - with digital, electronic or virtual practises. The Museum
is included in the web site called ODYSSEUS created and enriched, by a
central Direction in the Hellenic Ministry of Culture. This constitutes the
museum’s web presence and it does not have the hardware or technical
competence to intervene in its web presence. Links to other museums are
via the Ministry site. The museum has no plans for web-related training or
web-related investment or the development of e-learning materials.
The National Archaeological Museum views expansion of information and
communications technologies as an opportunity to grow. In particular, the
museum sees the development of ICT competences as necessary to widen
the scope of its researcher’s interactions with other museums (especially
archaeologists or conservators) and generally to allow the museum to play
a stronger role in Greece’s information society.
The museum’s policy is to become always better and more attractive for
its physical visitors. DVD’s are also prepared as well as an Audio-guides.
The museum hopes to expand both its physical and virtual visitors,
exploiting its reputation as being amongst the most important and famous
museums world-wide.
The position of the National Archaeological Museum of Athens is currently
strong, but may be weakened because of the absence of digital
competencies within the museum. In particular, the opportunity to
increase physical visitor numbers, work with other museums and improve
physical exhibitions as a result of work on virtual exhibits are being denied
the museum because of its lack of digital competences.

6. NEW SERVICE DEVELOPEMENT PROCESS
Because services are produced and consumed and co-created in real-time
an often involve interactions between employees and customers, it is also
critical that innovation and the new service development process involve
both employees and customers. Employees frequently are the service, or
at least they perform or deliver it, and thus their involvement in choosing
which new service to develop and how should design and implemention be
beneficial. (A.Wilson,2012).
As museums started to having websites, technological breakthrough
infiltrated. New wab-based services and local attraction work together
today with web & mobile integration.
The virtual museum must be seen as an e-service (MaaS –
Museum as a Service viepoint), part of which is the provision of e-
learning materials and opportunities for knowledge networking, in addition
to shared design and content of virtual exhibitions.
All e-services share three dimensions: connectivity, interactivity and
agility.
 Interactivity: here refers to virtual and physical presence and the
relation between them (the 'click-and-brick' balance). The
emphasis here is upon functional integration i.e. qualitative
deployment of knowledge, rather than simply the multiplication of
functions. Interactivity is purposive and not an end to itself.
 Connectivity: is both technical and social, it entails both
communications linkages and knowledge networking via inter-
organisational links and the integration of fragmented functions
within the museum.
 Agility: (see Nagel and Dove, 1992) suggest long-term inter-
organisational relationships from which museums learn in addition
to learning from their environmental. Hence, agility also means
having the absorptive capacity and/or knowledge generating ability
to resourcefully participate in knowledge networks. Critically, the
term means the capability and desire to continually innovate
organisational or technological change in order to remain aligned
with unfolding business opportunities.

Propsed applications for the museum:
 Interior wifi systems
 Video and photo galleries (offline & online)
 QR codes scanning for exhibit categorization
 Augmented reality screening for special artifacts
 Interactive web-cam apps
 Gamification of exhibits with social apps development
 Mobile ticketing
 Digital 360 3D space review
Virtual visits:
People, wherever they are, will be able to use the electronic networks to
reach out across geographical barriers to national, regional and local
museums. By providing more access points to the the Library Network,
will offer many more places where people can use the networks.
The new technologies offer new ways for the museum to work for social
inclusion. Disabled people and others subject to barriers of distance or
other factors will be able to benefit from the museum.
6. 1 Creating the digital museum
Digital museum will deliver access and services in a variety of ways:
• Centres in museum, for informationaccess and participative activities
• Interactive gallery exhibits, participatory activities, personal digital
guides, etc.
• Online information and services delivered via the internet, some free
and some by subscription
• Through multimedia publishing media, CD ROMs, digital television,
commercial service providers, etc. Common to all these will be the
digitized content and services which will enable access to collections and
information, participative input, and two-way interaction between users,
staff, museum and many different publics.
The new digital services must have the ability to respond to people’s
different interests and to their diverse requirements and cultural and
learning preferences. To do this, gateways to the networks need to be
developed – portals to online resources of all kinds – in combination with
search and navigation tools. These gateways are as important as are any
of the resources to which they lead. Indeed, gateways will be at the heart
of the National Grid for Learning.

7. REASEARCH & OBSERVATION:
JUSTIFICATION OF NEW SERVICE
7.1 Internal Training
Museum staff, volunteers and a wider public will require new skills to
create, manage and maintain participatory and truly interactive digital
applications. Museum people will need to understand experiential learning
and the techniques of information management and multimedia creation.
They will also need to draw on inputs from a wide range of disciplines.
7.2 Making a start on personel training
Skills that will be needed:
• To digitise, manipulate, and maintain museum collections information,
images and other resources
• To develop new approaches to maximize the learning opportunities
offered by digital museums
• To define and manage multimedia projects
• To enable customer care staff to help visitors to use information and
communication technology
• To work with others to enable community projects and create cultural
resources. First will have to train their own staff in the skills of using
digital technologies and museum resources to enable public learning and
participation, and to assist users. The second is training for the museums'
public, to enable both adults and children to make creative use of cultural
resources in their communities.
Training for volunteers must also not be overlooked. Volunteers play a
productive role in museum services. Many small museums are crucially
dependent on them. This is another opportunity offered by the new
technologies: to engage the enthusiasm, skills and interests of volunteers
to helpcreate digital resources.

8. CONCLUSION & RECOMMENDATIONS
Museums vary widely in the size and quality of their collections and their
ability to research, catalogue and display in permanent and special
exhibitions their stock of treasures. Virtuality adds the further dimensions
of connectivity, interactivity and agility to the points differentiating
museums. In doing so particular attention mast be given to the staff
competences and training needs of the museums.
In Athens, the National Archaeological Museum already has a high level of
visitors, yet is almost equally constrained by lack of direct connectivity. In
setting out its vision of creating a pilot virtual pre-history. A key need is
the systematic upgrading of ICT and web-related competences in
museums.
This report has shown how, with appropriate information and
communications technology, the museum can make a key contribution to:
• Supporting the learning society
• Access and social inclusion
• Excellence and support for the creative industries.
In the following years, we envisage every the museum becoming
connected to the Grid. The outcome will be an enormous increase in the
number of people who can use the resources of our museum, and in the
range and quality of services and information provided for them for
learning and for enjoyment.

9. APPENDIX
A] Trip Advisor English reviews examples from visitors for AMA
(page 70)
“the best museum in Athens”
Reviewed 1 March 2012, by Andreas. A, Gothenburg, Sweden,
Contributor
This is the best museum I have ever visited in Greece. Better even than
the Acropolis museum. Thousands of exhibits. However one must visit it
during the daylight because the area at night is a bit dangerous.
“Impressive”
Reviewed 1 March 2012, by your_solemate, Szekesfehervar,
Hungary, Senior Contributor
I must say this museum is one of the best I've visited. I'm not a museum
fan, but I enjoyed my visit tremendously. When we visited, there was an
exhibit on myths and coinage, which was very interesting and informative.
There are a lot of artifacts to see, although in my opinion some pieces
were redundant so it can get tiring. I recommend getting a guide to make
sure you don’t miss the important sculptures and details.
“So big...”
Reviewed 29 February 2012, by fefa, Top Contributor - Campinas,
SP
You will need more than three hours to pass by...the people working there
are not nice at all, and they should have more patience with tourists.
“A must see”
Reviewed 28 February 2012, by Kate.O, Senior Reviewer -
Hastings, United Kingdom
Another great place to visit for historical facts. Not that brilliant if you
want to learn more about the myths, which was the purpose of my visit.
Still, there were sights to see that made it all worthwhile.

B] AMA Overall reviews image – Tripadvisor.com

C] AMA Museum SWOT ANALYSIS
Strengths Weaknesses
• fair web presence • Web presence externally
controlled
• Financially secure • Little internal ICT competence
• DVD and Audio-guide • No training plans
• High visitor numbers
(especially international
visitors), good location
• Static web exhibition
• No digital catalogue
• Strong international
reputation
• Strong archaeology research
competency
• Few virtual links with non-
Greek museums
Opportunities Threats
• Plans to develop web
competences
• Advanced ICT infrastructure in
Athens
• Not part of emergent virtual
museum networks apart from
MU.S.EU.M. project
• Opportunity to further expand
visitor numbers via virtual
presence
• No benefit into physical
exhibitions from lessons of
virtual exhibitions

10. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Academic Journals
1. Ozge Ozgen, S.D Kurt (2012). Pre-recovery and post-recovery
emotions in the service context: a preliminary study. Managing
Srvice Quality Review. Vol. 22, No. 6, pp. 592-605
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performance. Business Process Management Journal. Vol. 18,
No.6, pp. 949-963
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decision-making approach. Managing Service Quality Review.
Vol.16, No.6, pp.641-653
4. A.Gilmore, R. Rentschler (2002). Changes in museum management.
A custodial or marketing emphasis ?. Journal of management
development. Vol. 21, No. 10, pp. 745-760
5. C. Vandi, E. Djebbari (2011). How to create new services between
library resources, museum exhibitions and virtual collections. Library
High Tech news. Number 2, pp.15-18
6. L.A. Wilson, E. Boyle (2004). The role of pertnerships in the delivery
of local government museum services: A case study from Northern
Ireland. The International Journal of Public Sector
Management. Vol.17, No.6, pp. 513-533
7. C. Goulding (2000). The museum environment and the visitor
experience. European Journal of Marketing. Vol. 34, No ¾, pp.
261-278
8. D. Kelly, C. Storey (2000). New Service Development: initiation
strategies. International Journal of Service Industry
Management. Vol. 11, No.1, pp. 45-62
9. C. Boshoff (1996). An experimental study of service recovery
options. International Journal of Service Industry Management.
Vol. 8, No.2, pp. 110-130
10. A. Johne, C. Storey (1998). New Service Development: a review of
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Marketing. Vol.32, No.3/4, pp. 184-251

11. A. B. Jones, R. Silvestro (2010). Measuring internal service quality:
comparing the gap-based and perceptions-only approaches.
International Journal of Operations & Production
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12. R. Sousa, A. Yeung, T.C.E Cheng (2008). Customer heterogeneity in
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13. C. P. Bebko (2001). Service encounter problems: which service
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14. J. J. Cronin, S.A. Taylor (1994). SERVPER vs SERVQUAL: reconciling
performance-based and perception-minus-expectations measurement
of service quality. Journal of Marketing. Vol. 58, pp 125-131
Academic Books
1. A. Wilson et al (2012). Services Marketing. Integrating
Customer Focus Across the Firm. McGraw Hill. 2nd
European
Edition.
2. Fisk R, J. Johne, Grove.S (2008). Interactive Marketing
Services. Boston. 3rd
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Internet
 http://penn.museum/documents/publications/expedition/PDFs/52-1/zeus.pdf
[Accessed -10/5/2013]
 http://www.europeanvirtualmuseum.it/pdf/Delphi%20report%20for%20Web.pdf
[Accessed - 7/5/2013]
 http://www.utexas.edu/research/pasp/publications/pdf/unlocking.pdf [Accessed -
28/4/2013]
 http://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/sources/docgener/presenta/cities/cities_en.pdf
[Accessed-26/4/2013]
 http://whc.unesco.org/uploads/activities/documents/activity-113-2.pdf [Accessed
- 19/4/2013]
 http://www.lsa.umich.edu/UMICH/modgreek/Home/Window%20to%20Greek%20C
ulture/Lectures%20at%20U-M/LaUM_Damaskos_Archaelogy.pdf [Accessed -
20/4/2013]
 http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/cache/ITY_OFFPUB/KS-32-10-374/EN/KS-32-10-
374-EN.PDF [Accessed - 14/4/2013]
 http://www.namuseum.gr/wellcome-gr.html [Accessed - 12/4/2013]
 http://www.tripadvisor.com.gr [Accessed - 4/5/2013]

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