The Co-Production of Value in an Art Market: Exploring Service Relationships

Abstract

The purpose of this research is to analyze service dominated relationships and differences in characteristics of these relationships within arts marketing. The appreciation of art is seen as a service and is intertwined with the creation of company identity and thus a subtle kind of marketing, whether this is a conscious or non-conscious strategy from a company perspective. Companies invest in art in order to enhance their image, and establish network relationship with art firms. The data is collected from the Swedish non-profit art market of public and private organizations with focus on Stockholm, an art market place as well as a prime site for company head quarters. The data is analyzed with multivariate correspondence analysis (MCA), which is also known as geometric data analysis (GDA). This method enables analysis of relationships as well as overall characteristics of the participants in these relationships: a part of service as well as a creation of company identity, thus marketing. The research has shown that the service encounter within arts is enhanced within relationships between key actors that can be considered co-producers of art and that multivariate correspondence analysis is a helpful tool to identify these relationships and company characteristics in a structured manner. The methodology is generating visual pictures of the art market that cooperates with profit making ordinary companies in different industries. The graph that is produced with MCA is a visualization of what can be regarded as a map of the companies with connections to the nonprofit art market, whether these connections are formal and a part of regular business activities or informal and relatively weak.