ABSTRACT
Marketing's concern with the customer requires an understanding of the market potential. As museums are 'for the people', this assumes that the potential is limitless. Museums have in fact been lauded for their relevance to everyone, for their all-encompassing scope to attract any market sector (Jenkinson 1989). Enshrined in their purpose, to undertake various functions 'for the public benefit' (Museums Association 1984), this democratic raison d'être raises the museum above other leisure activities that reach out only to specific sectors of the population. But this notion of public service has not always been the case, and is not inherent in the structure of many museums. Any analysis of the history of museums would ascribe to the public only a secondary role to that of the preservation of the collection, while the public had only minimal influence in the initial creation of museums (Adam 1939). The shift in emphasis from the private to the public domain is only recent and in many museums the private still dominates.
