Online Innovation in Museums

During the last decades, museums have changed substantially – they are more oriented towards their visitors and dependent on the market. In order to be successful and appealing to the audience, museums have realized the power of innovation, of which one crucial factor is Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). In this context, their online presence plays a decisive role. The levels of innovative adaption vary among museums, a fact that can be traced back to characteristics that impact the behavior of a museum. With this background, the research of this thesis aims at detecting the most relevant museum characteristics that influence their innovativeness. It considers one aspect of innovation in museums, technological innovation in customer reach, and investigates the differences in the online presences of museums. By pursuing a website content analysis the researcher analyzes the websites and social media portals. This analysis focuses on three groups of types in three European countries, Austria, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, and considers four museum characteristics, namely, size, type, country and competition. In order to find an answer to the main research question, various statistical tests were conducted. The results indicate that size and country have great influence on the online presence, whereas the impact of types and competitive situation is rather week. Moreover, it stresses the considerable higher level of innovativeness of British museums and furthermore, the analysis highlights the increasing (online) power of large museums.