Reflections on the economic strategies of private museums. A comparative study of the private museums in Meteora.

Abstract: The thesis examines the economic strategies which two private museums of Meteora, the Hellenic Culture Museum and the Natural History Museum of Meteora and Mushroom Museum implement, so as to grasp the economic strategies that private museums in Greece adopt. Utilizing Varbanova’s (2013) framework which places specific emphasis not only on the open-system theory as an efficient way to comprehend the macro-level challenges (in particular the economic crisis and Covid-19, which had been plaguing the two museums for a long time) and opportunities (as the ones that can result from the implementation of a particular legal status in the context of a given cultural policy), but also on the stakeholder and resource-dependence theories, which acknowledge the pivotal role that various actors and resources inside and outside an organization play in museums’ prosperity, the thesis analyzes previous literature that demonstrates economic strategies that (public and private) museums adopt, so as to secure their continuation and thriving. Through conducting semi-structured interviews with the directors of the museums as well as a non-participant observation on the Internet based on the webpages and the social media accounts of the two museums on Facebook and Instagram, examining every post since the accounts’ creation, the thesis tried to shed light on the implemented economic strategies of the two private museums that permit them to overcome economic challenges and secure their economic well-being. The results indicated that the two museums were concentrated mainly on their shop and entrance fee, adding the e-shop and the truffle-hunting activity in the case of Natural History Museum of Meteora and Mushroom Museum, so as to self-generate income, while the emphasis on stakeholder engagement characterizes the case of the abovementioned museum, which endeavored to engage its stakeholders with its truffle-hunting activity and the preparatory process of its shop products. Furthermore, the introduction of the law 4072/2012 enabled the emergence of private companies and, therefore, played a crucial role in the economic strategies that private museums could adopt, defining the limits of their actions.