Abstract:

The main objective of this paper is not to legitimate a marketing strategy specific to the arts, but rather to take note of certain transformations occurring in the market today, and, in so doing, reveal certain implicit marketing rules which seem to function therein, rules which may be seen as reversing usual marketing practice. In any field so vast as that of the arts it is first necessary to introduce key concepts allowing one to distinguish the different "products" on the basis of their relation to the frame of creation / production, such as their conformability, reproducibility, consumability, and appropriability. The authors further seek to identify the operative components of the market in relation to the building of demand on the basis of the management of supply, to the type of involvement of the client-consumer, to the role of various prescriptive agents, and to the nature of the object itself as a system of signs. Lastly, in addressing the question of methodology in marketing culture and the arts, it is proposed that an integrated approach need introduce the concept of signification to the usual marketing strategies, notably through semiotic analysis of the circulation of communication within the market before carrying out qualitative or quantitative surveys.