Economics, Marketing and Performances of U.S. Classical Music: journeyin’ together to de promise land

Since the beginning of the latest financial and real crisis in 2008, USA symphony orchestras and opera houses have revealed adaptation to the turmoil of scarce resources and a very keen competition (Jeannotte, Duxbury, 2015; Turbide, Laurin, Lapierre, Morissette, 2008). Adaptation has had multiple implications: implementation of websites and social media as innovative tools for audience exploration and development (Pierotti, Risaliti, Cestari, 2014; Ravanas, 2008); revenue diversification and performance measurement (Hong, 2014; Besana, 2012;); community engagement together with testing of new segments like tourists (Kemp, Poole, 2016; Guachalla, 2012; Woosnam, McElroy, Van Winkle, 2009; Poon, Lai, 2008). Marketing, and especially social media marketing, has had a crucial new role and enhanced “interactive online world in which participants with different interests, resources and power co-create value” (Kornum, Mühlbacher, 2013). Marketing and fundraising have extracted both willingness-to-pay and willingness-to-donate from audiences, while audiences have been spending more time than ever using social media, and the U.S. classical music has been striving to use social media and to reach, engage, catch and hold the millions of consumers who use it daily, tourists included (Parsons, 2011). Marketing has called for e-commerce of audiences; fundraising has called for s-commerce of philanthropists. After analysing the new marketing scenario and pointing out social media marketing strategies of U.S. classical music, this paper investigates 100 symphony orchestras and 100 opera houses according to their revenues, expenses and gains (or losses) in 2015. Thanks to cluster analysis, three groups will emerge with different performances and prevailing fundraising.