ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The Museum store association (MSA) is a nonprofit, international organization dedicated to specialty retailers of cultural institutions. MSA undertakes a retail industry study every few years as part of its mission to advance the success of nonprofit retail and of the professionals engaged in it. This is an industry wide study and not a member survey. In addition to overall results, data in the survey has been broken out in several ways to provide better analysis for managers using this information to compare with their own stores. Survey data is also broken out by store sales, when appropriate. A majority of respondents provided sales data for their store. There were more small stores than large stores in the survey, an accurate reflection of the overall MSA market.
