Rethinking Museum Visitors: Using K‐means Cluster Analysis to Explore a Museum's Audience

Understanding visitors is a necessary and complex undertaking. In this article, we present K-means cluster analysis as one strategy that is particularly useful in unpacking the complex nature of museum visitors. Three questions organize the article and are as follows: 1) What is K-means cluster analysis? 2) How is K-means cluster analysis conducted? 3) Most importantly: What are the applications of K-means cluster analysis for museum practitioners? To answer these questions, we present five steps that are vital to conducting a K-means cluster analysis. We also present three cases studies to demonstrate differences among the results of three K-means cluster analyses and provide practical applications of the findings.