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RESEARCH & BENCHMARKING
Museum & Science Center Shop Benchmarking
2026 · Ongoing
THE QUESTION
Museum retail keeps growing in strategic importance — yet museum shops are compared to everything except each other. The sector has no shared benchmarks and no comparable data. How can any institution know where it actually stands?
WHAT WE ARE DOING
Together with Museum Connections, we are running the first comprehensive international benchmarking study of museum retail, building on research conducted within Future Museum. The survey covers nine dimensions of retail practice — shop positioning, visitor and customer profiles, operations, financial performance and KPIs, online retail, licensing, sustainability, and future trends. All data is fully anonymised and aggregated; no individual organisation is identifiable.
WHAT PARTICIPANTS WALK AWAY WITH
A shared, data-based picture of where museum retail stands today, their own position within it, and the resulting international white paper on museum retail. The Future Museum shop benchmarking round already brought together 25 institutions from 13 countries — from ACMI in Melbourne to the Swiss National Museum.
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