An Approach to Identifying Motivations for Membership in Leisure Service Delivery Organizations

Interest in the development and/or refinement of membership programs as earned income strategies has heightened as leisure service delivery organizations compete for increasingly limited public and private funds. As in any exchange theory-based scenario, a precursor to evaluating any earned income strategy is an understanding of the role of consumer motivation in the planned transaction. This paper provides a framework derived from motivation theory for exploring the motivations for membership in leisure service delivery organizations. The framework was utilized to evaluate and segment the members of a large museum based upon their motivations. Analysis was then conducted to determine the relationships between the members' motives and their importance rating of program benefits. The findings suggest a disparity between the expressed motivations and the benefits members deemed important to their membership purchase decision. The implications to managers of stressing intangible as well as tangible benefits as consumer products are discussed