User profiling is a very important marketing strategy and should be a continuous and always updated activity as through profiling it is possible to get a perfect identikit of consumers, and this allows companies to know about their needs and undertake marketing strategies tailored to their tastes and habits. These considerations are ever more real in the cultural heritage sector: with an accurate profiling process, a personalization of the service can also be achieved in the museum context, with a communication strategy based on collaboration and adaptation between museum and visitor. The authors started from the analysis of the literature to build and propose an original managerial model for user profiling based on the joint analysis of four dimensions related to the topic (type, data collection tool, type of data collected, and levels of implementation). The findings emerged from the literature review, and the model was cross-referenced with the data relating to the MANN (National Archaeological Museum of Naples), the exploratory case study.
Top1. Introduction
User profiling is a very important marketing strategy as through profiling it is possible to get a perfect identikit of consumers and this allows companies, in this case museums, to know about their needs and undertake marketing strategies tailored to their tastes and habits. It is essentially a matter of gathering customers into target groups, i.e., homogeneous groups of customers who have similar characteristics to whom propose personalized offers and promotion strategies of a specific product/service, based on each target group that has been identified. The profiling activity should be continuous and always updated. In fact, when a new version of the product/service or a brand-new product/service is presented to the customer, it is necessary to collect feedback about it. Through the feedback collected, it will be possible to improve the quality of offerings or experience taking into account information about customers who, without profiling, would have been ignored.
These considerations are ever more real in the cultural heritage: with an accurate profiling process, a personalization of the service can also be achieved in the museum context, with a communication strategy based on collaboration and adaptation between museum and visitor (Fernandez-Lores et al., 2022). Profiling is certainly a tool that must be part of a museum's digital strategy, which needs careful planning and time to be effective (Orsini, 2020). The advent of smart museums and the internet of things (IoT) are making tools and techniques such as profiling increasingly accessible to museums (Ivanov, 2019).
There are several profiling approaches and technologies that can be adopted and used, starting from the traditional interviews, questionnaires and focus groups, arriving at more technological approaches that use social media analytics, RFID sensors and devices.
In this field, Information Communication Technology applications have a positive impact on the users’ visit experience and their overall enjoyment of the journey. They also offer the possibility of a virtual visit to users who may be unable or discouraged due to physical or cultural barriers, or who are physically far from the museum, bringing them closer to art and thus collecting data on behavior also, of this segment of visitors. For cultural institutions, these tools represent an opportunity to attract even younger visitors and to forge partnerships and synergies with private companies and other stakeholders.
Further visitor studies show that visitors feel more motivated with interactive experiences, such as guided tours, compared to traditional visits between collections organized according to a taxonomic approach (Pietroni, 2019).
Over the years, the classic museum visit has changed into a real experience, in some cases highly personalized and engaging, both remotely, virtually (online) and physically (on-site). The museum's mission has therefore evolved, focusing on offering personalized services for different visitors from all over the world. To do this, it becomes vital for an institution to know its target audiences, therefore the interaction with the current and potential audience plays a central role (Karaman et al., 2016).
The importance of observing the public to grasp their behaviors, distinguishing active users from passive ones to better understand the dynamics of use, the use of quantitative and qualitative tools, allows museums to obtain useful data in this sense, precious not only for researchers but also for museum governance, for technical staff and for tourist guides, with the aim of becoming more aware and ready to face critical situations and seize the opportunities offered by digital.
However, although museum development has made many steps forward in recent years, user profiling is still not often practiced by them. Furthermore, even if the topic is of great interest in the scientific community, practical examples are still few and mainly related on basic profiling criteria, such as sex, nationality, and age which cannot let museums develop content able to satisfy a varied audience.