Just over 10% of Australia?s population live outside the major urban centres, hugging the coastline, explains Tim Roberts. Approximately 2.3m people are spread throughout regional Australia, covering roughly 7.7m km2 (over 30 times the size of the UK).This means that for the majority of Australia, there is roughly one person every 3.3km2! In light of this, regional audiences must overcome significant issues of distance and access in order to pursue cultural and leisure opportunities. A network of nearly 100 regional performing arts centres throughout Australia provides valuable opportunities for these regional audiences to attend the arts.
Until recently there had been no concerted effort to quantify and research the audiences attending the regional performing arts centres, so as to produce an integrated and comprehensive profile of the regional performing arts audiences based on actual attendance. The ticketing database is an invaluable source of information on performing arts attendance, enabling a detailed picture of consumption and the consumers; so in 1999 Arts Research & Ticketing Services (ARTS) Australia and The Dramatic Group were funded to conduct a research project that analysed the combined ticketing databases of 28 regional performing arts centres.
Although many of the theatres had up to seven years of box office data available for analysis, a common sample frame was adopted for all centres, focusing on attendances during the years 1996?1998. This involved gathering data on over 250,000 customers, 1m transactions and 2.8m tickets for more than 6,500 performing arts events. Analysis was conducted individually for each venue, as well as aggregated on a state and national basis to provide a detailed and objective picture of regional performing arts consumption for the three-year survey period. Analysis included recency and frequency of purchase, payment and booking methods, artform categorisation breakdowns and the application of geodemographics in the form of MOSAIC to produce detailed customer profiles, as well as their transactions with performing arts centres. The research has resulted in the publication of Ticket2Research, which gives a practical and theoretical background to the work, explains the analytical framework, and details findings and recommendations, as well as the training materials prepared for the participating venues.
The research has identified several findings of strategic significance to the performing arts industry in Australia. It has revealed that poor repeat patronage is common to most arts centres, with over 80% of database entrants having made two or less purchases in the life of the venues? box office systems. The poor recency of attendance evidenced in the study, combined with the frequency and volume analysis, strengthens the finding that, in general, the venues have several fundamental issues to address with regard to securing customers, creating a pattern of attendance, and engendering loyalty.
This project should open doors to a range of opportunities for the continued development of marketing techniques and analysis, and highlights many issues that must clearly be addressed. Audiences appear to be on the increase, but venues need to work actively to secure repeat attendances.
Tim Roberts is Marketing Manager of ARTS Australia t: 00 61 2 9356 3777 e: tim.roberts@artsoz.com.au.The regional audience research project was funded by the Audience & Market Development Division of the Australia Council and sponsored by Pacific Micromarketing (Asia Pacific licensee of Experian?s MOSAIC). The publication Ticket2Research was sponsored by Tickets.com. It can be ordered securely from http://www.dramaticonline.com at $29.50 + postage (Australia $5.00, Overseas $10.00). For further information see w: http://www.artsoz.com.au
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