Omni-channel communication in cultural services.

The research aims to underline the increasing importance of digital communication in stimulating service experience in museums (Siu et al., 2013; Di Pietro et al., 2014). The museums’ need to attract audience is an emerging issue, especially as the European Union has launched different funding programmes on the audience development (Bamford and Wimmer, 2012). Museums challenges to develop new communication strategies and the innovative initiatives cultural managers are experimenting to attract visitors seem to be increasingly related to the already known concept of omnichannel communication in retailing (Verhoef et al., 2015). These features are even more relevant for the twenty autonomous public museums in Italy, as the autonomy in the resource management has been the driving force for the development of new initiatives, especially concerning communication. This research analyses the impacts of the different communication initiatives of the National Archaeological Museum of Naples (MANN) through the lens of omnichannel strategies.