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Marketing to College Aged Audiences 

In most arts disciplines, a continually declining base of subscribers means that the core group of devoted audience members is weakening, without a younger audience stepping in to replace them. For many reasons, college students represent an ideal target market for the arts: they are (and will be) among the most highly-educated segment of the population; they have significant socialization needs that arts organizations can satisfy, and, as future professionals, represent the most likely boards, volunteers, supporters and audiences of tomorrow.

In October of 2006 and 2007, and as part of a market research class in the Arts Administration Graduate Program at Drexel University, surveys were distributed to 800 students from nine universities and colleges in the Philadelphia region.

The results of the Research-Based Audience Development: Developing the College Student Audience study are quite promising for arts organizations, such as:

• Students declared themselves to be “very interested” in attending a variety of arts events (opera 12%, museums 28%, theatre 29%, musicals and arts and cultural festivals 32%, among others).

• A significant proportion of those surveyed were willing to pay significantly higher prices that those currently charged for student tickets. For example, 36% were willing to pay between $30 and $50 for tickets to musicals, 30% were willing to pay between $11 and $20 for theatre and dance performances, and 25% were willing to pay within the same range ($11-$20) for classical music concerts. Finally, 25% were willing to pay between $5 and $10 for museum tickets.  

The Breakfast Learning Circles are generously underwritten by the Phoebe W. Haas Charitable Trust "A” with support also provided by The Pew Charitable Trusts, The Philadelphia Foundation, and The Wallace Foundation.