An exploration of factors affecting customer satisfaction with selected history museum stores

The purpose of this research was to investigate customer satisfaction of visitors to history museum stores. In addition, the relationships between customer satisfaction and demographics, nostalgia proneness, satisfaction with the museum and general life satisfaction were investigated. Participants in the study were adult visitors to the Kanseis Museum of History in Topeka, Kanscis, the Palace of the Governors in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and the Panhandle Plains History Museum in Canyon, Texas, during the spring of 1998. The selfadministered questionnaire was completed by 196 participants who had made purchases in the museum store. To elicit information on Nostalgia Proneness, Holbrook's Nostalgia Index was used. A 5-point Likert-type scale anchored with "Terrible" and "Delighted" was used to measure customer satisfaction.

The sample consisted of 70% women with a mean age range of 60-69 years. The mean gross annual income for the participants was from $50,000 to $59,000, and 66.0% of the sample had completed college or beyond. The majority of participants (55.9%) were on their first visit to the museum and were accompanied by 1 -5 companions. Most respondents (81.7%) purchased fewer than five items, spent between $10.01 and $20.00, and purchased more items (56.1 %) for others than for themselves.

Spearman's rho correlations revealed that three variables: age of participant, place of residence, and those experiencing their first visit to the museum had low. positive relationships with customer satisfaction. No statistically significant relationship weis found between nostalgia proneness and customer satisfaction. However, correlations did reveal strong positive relationships between satisfaction with the museum, general life satisfaction, and satisfaction with the museum store. Multiple regression techniques to determine the relative importance of variables to customer satisfaction indicated that satisfaction with the museum had a greater significance in the explanation of customer satisfaction than did general life satisfaction.