Culture is a subject that, regardless of the direction from which it is approached, scares or worries. It's scary when it comes to the general baggage that each of us left home after seven years and that we should have after we leave school sooner or later, and especially after we forget. everything I found there. We are also reassured by the thought that certain cultural activities are addressed to an audience that is either too "elitist" or a bit "snobby", with which we do not identify much, which really comforts us. It worries us when we look at the figures that illustrate how much culture is consumed, and the European Commission's Eurobarometers show that the situation is sad. Because it is difficult to imagine how in the member states of the European Union, which are at a high level of development, more than half of their citizens are not interested or do not have time to read (at least) a book, to visit a monument or a historical place, to go to a museum, not to mention seeing a ballet, dance or opera show ...
And yet, there is a cultural market that, paradoxically, an increasingly varied offer, but at the same time even more incoherent, addresses a demand that is significantly lower than it could and should be. But what did I say earlier? "Market"!? Here is a word that is difficult to accept by many of those who work in the cultural field because
"Market" involves exchange, which involves money, or, as is well known, cultural activity has no commercial character, does not pursue profit, its mission being much higher: to educate, to cultivate, to raise awareness, in no case to sell , to cover expenses and to produce a positive difference between receipts and costs. Philip Kotler wrote in the mid-1970s about how marketing principles work just as well in the cultural field, but his ideas were hard to accept even then. There was a need for a conceptual transition that would lead from the cultural economy to cultural management, then, from here, with some weight, to cultural marketing.
If from a theoretical point of view the world understood this transition better and better and, especially, accepted it more and more, from a practical point of view things did not progress in the same way. So now we are in the situation where we talk more and more frequently about cultural marketing, we understand better and better how it works and what it could be used for, but we rarely do it because we do not have: budget, a man trained in field or too much need - excuses have never been lacking. When the chorus of those who argue the need to understand and practice cultural marketing adds another voice, it certainly matters and is good for marketing. Mr. Andrei Badin's book is a scientifically substantiated, relevant and consistently illustrated operationally pleading, which also puts a solid brick in the construction of the set of marketing concepts, tools and techniques that can and must be used on the cultural market. Going through the pages, the reader travels through the field of marketing from concept to strategy, passing through the cultural market and discovering the cultural consumer and his behavior, then stopping to explore possible combinations of products, prices, distribution and promotion that any entity offering goods, services , events and cultural activities can assemble them to meet the needs of the market and meet them. Useful both for those who learn and research, but especially for those who strive to put it into practice, the work is a real cultural marketing approach for which both the author and the editor deserve our appreciation.
Prof. univ. Dr. Calin Veghes
Dean of the Faculty of Marketing
The Academy of Economic Studies in Bucharest