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Hello, Edith:

Its interesting you are a marketing professor.  I got an MBA nearly 25  
years ago, and at the time, the marketer's mantra was that the most  
efficiently spent marketing dollar was in product research and design.   
In other words, it is better, more efficient, and generally savvier to  
develop products that people want rather than trying to sell products  
into a market that is either uninterested, saturated, or even negative  
to your product.

I always use that as an example of where nfp's are different than for  
profits.  We are here as nfp's specifically because the product we are  
selling is not tailored to the market, but is rather driven by a  
specific social mission.  It is clearly not going to be a profitable  
venture to supply meals to indigent people, but nfp's do it anyway.   
There seem to be some who think that it would be better for us to find  
a way to provide meals for those who can pay, but of course that  
obviates our mission.

That is an extreme case of what I think is at hand with the current  
question.  If we were purely market driven, then screw it, we would  
just give the people the version of truth they are most comfortable  
with, or only provide it to those who already agree with us.  But that  
is not our mission, it is to present ideas that may be unfamiliar to  
the public in a way that might challenge them.  That is why we deserve  
philanthropy and why we are in business.

Ideally, you can do some of both...delivering the truth as we see it in  
forms that are accessible to visitors.  I think everyone in the science  
center field, even those most adamantly opposed to accommodating  
different perspectives on issues like evolution, are working toward  
that goal.

Eric Siegel
Executive VP
    Programs and Planning
NY Hall of Science
47-01 111th Street
Queens, NY 11368
www.nyscience.org
On Mar 29, 2005, at 8:15 PM, Edith Piaf wrote:

> ISEN-ASTC-L is a service of the Association of Science-Technology  
> Centers
> Incorporated, a worldwide network of science museums and related  
> institutions.
> *********************************************************************** 
> ******
>
>  
> 	I am a professor of marketing and i agree. one must target the  
> marketing campaign toward a reach market or target market that is most  
> likely to buy the product. if the product is scientific museum  
> education and the target market is scientists than the packaging of  
> the product should geer toward the scientists and not creationalists.  
> The promotional strategy must also use buying motives that would  
> target the scientific target market. Here you would use rational  
> buying motives. perhaps if the target market was the creationalists,  
> one may use emotional buying motives. think of Abraham Maslow's  
> heirarchy of needs./
> Edith

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