A New Era for Marketing Science Centers

In the 1980s in the United States, the traditional science center business and mission models worked well. Science centers were the most prominent source for informal science learning with financial support from governments and donors and a quasi-monopoly on IMAX films, science store merchandise, and interactive exhibits. A science center’s exhibit department would devise interesting exhibits, and the marketing department simply advertised that content to whatever audience might be interested. From today’s perspective, those were relatively simple times.

Things began to change in the 1990s thanks to two primary forces: escalating competition and growing customer sophistication. In science centers, these forces for change have had the most dramatic impact on the marketing department, which still has to perform traditional functions (e.g., advertising, branding) but also has new functions (Gordon & Perrey, 2015), which I discuss in this article from my perspective as a long-time strategist and trustee of Arizona Science Center, Phoenix.