No abstract

Despite the frequent call for a strengthened customer orientation in performing arts organizations, no efforts have been made to investigate customer satisfaction in opera so far. The paper aims at filling this gap by suggesting a first integrative model of customer satisfaction in opera. This model integrates insights from both services marketing literature (i.e., general services marketing and performing arts marketing) and performing arts literature (i.e., music perception and theater studies). The model is tested in a field study interviewing 116 visitors of a public German opera house. Results reveal visitors' level of appraisal to be the main antecedent of their satisfaction, followed by their perception of the artistic quality, empathy/identification with the actors on stage, and recall from memory. Furthermore, differences within the audience regarding the relative importance of the antecedents of customer satisfaction in opera are investigated. Using gender and attendance frequency as segmentation variables, only minor differences are found, though. Managerial implications for opera marketing are discussed in conclusion. First, efforts in opera marketing should rather concentrate on the core service quality instead of the peripheral service quality. Second, professional opera companies may attract broader audiences if they focus on the emotional satisfaction of their customers. Third, since only minor and mostly insignificant differences between men and women, and occasional compared to frequent visitors are found, a need for further research to explore alternative segmentation variables in the opera context is identified.

The article aims at explaining visitors' overall judgment of a theatrical event. A questionnaire was constructed including the 4 dimensions of the theatrical experience identified by Eversmann (2004): perceptual, cognitive, emotional, and communicative. The authors investigated 125 visitors of a production in a German community theater and confirmed that both the emotional and cognitive dimensions were determinants of visitors' overall judgment of a theatrical event. Implications for further research on the theatrical experience are discussed.

In the literature, there is broad agreement on the relevance of visitor's cognitive and emotional reaction to a theatrical performance. However, research on the relative importance of visitor's response for their overall subjective evaluation of a visit to the theater is rare. Addressing this research gap, this article investigates the relative impact of visitor's cognitive, emotional, and conative response to a performance for their overall subjective evaluation of a visit to the theater. A study of 2,795 visitors viewing 44 performances in 12 German-speaking theaters reveals visitor's emotional (i.e., involvement and empathy), cognitive (i.e., complexity), and conative (i.e., thought-provoking impulses, animation for communication) responses to a performance as significant determinants of their overall evaluation of a visit to the theater.

The authors focus on spectators' judgements on the performance quality in opera. The results of a field study conducted in Dessau Opera House revealed the single components (e.g. orchestra) and the congruency components (e.g. congruency between the music and the staging dimension) which contribute to operagoers' overall quality judgements. Spectators' individual judgements were found to be highly homogeneous, with only minor differences between experts and non-experts. Implications for the production and the management of opera are discussed.