Study On Visitor Behaviors In Museums Based On Symbolic Encoding And Knowledge Learning

With the opinion that our economic formation coming into experience economy and knowledge economy in marketing theory, what they competing with is not quality, producers should provide more unique experience instead. What museums can supply is culture connotation that refined and encoded, is just the one that concerned in experience economy.This article introduced its issues from the developing of museums'social education that improving peoples'literacy and exploring scientific spirit. Aiming at the current situation that low utilization ratio and low level of symbolic coding in museums'operation, we made the exhibition designing and visitors behavior in museum as researching object, explored how the two influence visitors'subjective utility experiencing process.Applying research achievement of consumer behavioral process and cognitive learning theory, this paper explored the simplified model based on visitors'knowledge acquirement. The main work of this paper is as following.(1) Study on classification of visitors'knowledge acquirement and learning behavior.Referencing symbolic communication and cognitive learning theory, we introduced the difference of learning mechanism as classification standard, made epistemology and learning theory as two dimensions. Reviewing the characteristics of its encoding and decoding process, we classified the learning model of visitors'knowledge acquirement during visiting the exhibition in museums according to the two dimensions. They were Discovering Learning, Traditional Learning, Behaviorism Learning and Constructivism Learning. Furthermore, here we designed different exhibition model and marketing strategies for museums aiming at visitors' different learning mechanism and experiencing features. According to the classification standard, we make empirical study with cluster analysis.(2) Measuring visitors'subjective utility and its influencing factors in the process of visiting and experiencing in museum.From the perspective that exhibition encoding and visitors decoding to learning knowledge, we constructed a simplified model on museum knowledge communication and visitors learning behavior, and measured visitors'subjective utility and its influencing factors in the process of visiting and experiencing in museum. Then we discovered the main influencing factors in this process:visitors'expected utility, perceived value, knowledge structure, decoding and learning model, subjective utility, visiting situation and exhibition technology of encoding, and show their general influence.Here we used factor analysis and Structural Equation Modeling to analyze data from questionnaire survey, to exam these hypothesis.(3) The category measurement and evaluation of the pattern of the exhibition.Accordingly, different learning mechanisms were adopted to differentiate the patterns of the exhibition. Organizers of the exhibition were treated as the disseminator of situational knowledge, and the visitors (consumers) as the learners of the knowledge, in this way, the patterns of the exhibition could be classified into four types:discovery exhibition, systematic exhibition, organized exhibition and construction of a knowledge-based exhibition. According to the effect of the coding process on the acceptance and learning behavior of the audiences, several aspects of the social influence of an exhibition was evaluated initially.Besides these, schedule of measuring the knowledge obtained through the visiting experience of the audiences were developed and designed in this paper, and the logical processes of the whole exhibitions were explored in viewpoints of the cognitive behavior of the audiences and the patterns of the exhibition designs as the coding process, which were especially emphasized in the gauges, different from the gauges that were adopted by the study on the audiences of the existing museum. Furthermore, the reliability and validity of the schedule was evaluated, which was not only the precondition of our study, but also the starting point of the next empirical research.