The Current Situation of the theatre is right as explained in the Kick-Off Meeting. They have steady and stable audience attendance numbers for their shows, and they maintain a good relationship with their audience. Furthermore, a few more shows and collaborations are outstanding until the season end. Last year’s statistical data shows that during the season 121 shows took place in the theatre and 89 were public shows and 32 were school performances. More than 8000 spectators visited shows in the theatre. The average utilization was 60%, and on average every show had 66 spectators. Besides the fact that the theater has no real pain points now and is in a stable situation, the question arose about how they can attract a broader audience. The central questions that the client would have an answer to were “which target audience they have” and “how efficient their communication channels are, advertisement actions towards their audience.” Therefore, the client has placed for this thesis to the FHNW to get an outside analysis/view from an economic student about their marketing activities.

An audience survey sets the basis for the segmentation, distributed at different shows the theatre still had programmed for this season. Furthermore, an electronic audience survey was embedded in the Newsletter of the theatre to reach more people, to than have a reliable sample size to analyse and define the audience segments. Afterward, the results of the audience surveys (segmentation) were the basis to define the target audience of the theatre. The information is used further to develop a marketing mix for the client. The next step was an analysis of the marketing mix based on the sources of the literature provided by marketing books and by the assessment of the current marketing mix of the theatre ThiK. In the end the procedure carries on with the phase were the authors take the previously conducted analysis of the segmentation, target audience and the marketing mix evaluation to elaborate a marketing concept/plan and give a recommendation to the client which marketing actions can he or she implement, to the ones already in place, short-term and which long-term. Furthermore, it will also develop a tool to measure the efficiency of the already existing marketing actions and the ones also recommended to the marketing plan.

Firstly, a guideline was established for the theatre by looking at international literature and introducing the theatre to the Strategic Marketing Process Planning, which provides the theatre with steps which to conduct before tackling the marketing mix and establish marketing activities. Secondly, the segmentation results showed that the segmentation could not be generalised, but the best-represented segments are the segment "older" where people are +60 than the segment "51-60" and then 41-50 and the following segments "31-40", "21-30" and "15-20" are poorly represented. This pattern is also reflected in the lifecycle of the cultural events visitors. It states that for younger people of society the cultural activities are depended on their families cultural activities, when they are older, their priorities lie in building and maintaining a family. As a result, they are having less time for cultural activities as they have different priorities. Afterward, from 50+, the people are more culturally active because usually, their children are old enough to structure their own leisure time. Thirdly the Targeting Sections showed that by segment size, growth rate, profitability, competition, and sustainability the most exciting target groups would be the segments form 21-30 and the 31-40. This is because their size is the biggest, their growth rate is consistent, their profitability is also set, there is not much competition between the people in the segments, and the sustainability is also there. Fourthly the Marketing Mix analysis showed that the theatre has an extensive product mix but no depth in their marketing mix. Their promotion and price activities already in place are good structured and well executed. Finally, the recommendation section showed that not every solution which had a high time exposure and cost factor had a low ranking in the value-benefit analysis, and vice-versa the same happened with solutions that had a low time exposure, and cost factor received a low ranking because, they had lower scores in other crucial points like, feasibility, and brand awareness.