The product described here is the free contemporary art advanced by La Machine- a street theatre firm which has given the city of Nantes’s shipbuilding warehouses and old docks a new look. The arrival of Jean Blaise in the mid-1980s marked the beginning of art and culture promotion. Blaise, the artistic director for the city of Nantes, proposed that the city had to hold cultural and artistic events in open and public places and all attendants were required to pay nothing. The strategy was meant to reach large population because a small fraction of the people could be willing to attend in case they were required to pay some entry fee. The first event to launch arts in Nantes was holding Les Allumees festival which attracted artists from all significant metropolis from all over the world including the city of St Petersburg, Barcelona, and Buenos Aires to participate in the events which ran from 6 pm to 6 am for six consecutive nights.
The marketing mix concept is applicable in this context. The four elements of the marketing mix include the product, price, place, and promotion. Jean Blaise appears efficient in applying this concept to promote arts in the city of Nantes. The products advertised here is arts and culture to restore the lost glory of the town. Besides, Blaise is perfectly achieving this objective in that the attendees are not required to pay money for admission to the cultural events planned to take place in the city. So the customers, are expected to pay nothing but the city council is expected to spend up to three million Euros to organize the event. The place or location of the performances will be in public areas are accessible to everyone willing to attend. The city administration promotes the activities by using artists with an international reputation to attract many people to the events.
The city of Nantes does not want to raise revenue by charging people for attending artistic and cultural events but wants to use indirect means to achieve this objective as well as promote the growth of Nantes as both as a tourist destination and a business center. The cultural events require the expenditure of around three million Euros, but the economic returns warrant this expenditure. An event in the city can attract up to 615,000 people, and approximately 15% of whom come from neighboring European countries. The observation here is that the strategy has managed to achieve the objective of drawing a considerable number of people who attend the event. The sizeable human traffic promotes business through expenditures on food, accommodation, and entertainment. The economy gains massively even though the visitors are no required to pay any penny to attend the cultural and artistic events. The economy reaps up to 48.8 million Euros at the end of the festivities. Besides, unemployment has significantly reduced because of the massive number of people who visit Nantes every year thus promoting investments and business expansion.
Question two
The customers for contemporary arts and cultural events advanced and organized in the city of Nantes are of various classes: the business owners in the town, the tourists who visit and attend the functions which take place in the metropolitan and the locals and other French nationals who come for entertainment in the festivities. The Nantais and the French, in general, form the vast majority of the clients of the cultural functions because they visit this urban area seeking for entertainment and in return do business with business owners running operations within Nantes. Secondly, the business community in the city demands artistic drawings such as humorous and quirky signs for their shop fronts because of their popularity and the cultural view they represent. The tourists and visitors from neighboring European countries form another group of clients for the artistic and cultural products advanced in Nantes. The large number of foreigners who attend the Les Voyage confirms that the event is famous and brings significant entertainment and satisfaction to the visitors.
The case study advances two crucial concepts regarding customers and consumption: consumption and pleasure and consumption and identity. The city of Nantes does not want to charge people for attending some artistic and cultural festivals held in public plays, but it is determined to build the economy of the city by offering opportunities for entertainment for visitors who will then make purchases during the pleasure-seeking period in the entertainment events. For instance, during the Les Allumees, artists coming from various parts of the world perform on stage and at around 2 am all the attendants are required to relocate to large industrial spaces with bars, live bands, and bars. The relocation is meant to promote consumption as people entertain themselves through live music. Through this strategy, the city administration gains by increased business around the urban area. Consumption and recognition is another concept advanced in this case. The environment and social buzz created by these artists and cultural events make everyone to be associated with this city. People would like to visit the city and feel its greatness in terms of art, entertainment and culture. Through these visitations, people feel great and proud and would like to share their stories about Nantes. However, the underlying strategy being pursued by the authorities is to promote business. It is to increase the number of tourists who visit and spend here.
The aspects which motivate customers to buy the artistic and cultural services offered by the city of Nantes include the pleasures, prestige, and serenity of the town. For instance, Nicolas Mitric, one of the staff from Termite factory, a graphics and visual storytelling company confessed that meeting people in Nantes is much more natural and everything moves faster. Further, life in Nantes is cheap, people are very humane, and it is full of creative individuals. Business operations run faster. These features of the city and the characteristics of the events plus the relationship established by the inhabitants makes people from within the city, France at large and even from neighbouring countries prefer to visit and experience the culture of Nantes.
Question 3
The circular flow of income describes the movement of goods and services and payments between firms and households in a particular country. A firm represents the organizations which provide products and services. Examples of firms include various business entities. On the other households include an economic unit comprising of people living at the same address. It can be a single person living alone, a family with children or any other group of people living at the same address.
Households receive money from firms in various ways which include: rent, dividends from shares, salaries or wages. These are compensations for the multiple factors of production supplied by the household. The production factors include land, labor, and capital. Further, families give money to firms through the goods and services they obtain from the firms. The model is just a representation of the flow of income in a country. Nevertheless, the circular flow does not always capture all the movements of money in an economy. The household members can pay taxes, can invest or even purchase imported goods and services which are not represented in the flow.
The circular flow model applies to the free public arts events provided by the administration of Nantes. The Nantes administration acts as a firm in this context which provides entertainment services to people within the city, the whole of France, and even the citizens of the neighboring European countries. However, there is a small difference here because the Nantes administration does not receive money directly from the free arts and cultural entertainment services they offer. Practically the city management wants to increase human traffic in the city to create business opportunities for the local businesses. Therefore, during the free art and cultural events which take place in Nantes, the people who visit need to acquire various goods and services to comfortably live until they leave to their different homes and countries. During their stay, they have to get accommodation services from guesthouses or from various restaurants. At this juncture, they pay to get the accommodation.
Besides, they need food and drinks during their time in Nantes, thus they have to spend a lot of money in the hotels, thus promoting the hospitality industry. When they need to move from one part of the city to another, they have to acquire taxi services or public transport. All these require expenditure which obviously benefits the local service providers in the town. Worth mentioning is the banking sector from where they acquire financial services such as cash withdrawals or foreign exchange services. In conclusion, the visitors spend on local businesses which can offer those services. When the number of visitors is high, business activities increase, traders earn more and lift the economy and financial status of the locals. When the number of visitors is low, the opposite is true. Thus, the free public arts and cultural events improve the local economy.
Question 4
The activities performed by a government in a mixed economic framework include the provision of public services, direct support to business ventures through advocacy and financial aid, public procurement, and the establishment of the judicial system. Governments engage in establishing the legal framework to handle the rights and responsibilities of the action spaces of private, public and third sectors. The legal framework calls for enactment of laws, regulations, and policies such as rights of workers, consumer protection, advertising, health and safety, environmental conservation, etc. The government has formulated laws and regulations for all sectors.
Provision of public goods is another function of government. The public goods include public services which universally affect all people. These include construction of basic infrastructure and provisions of basic services. The public goods and services include roads, education, health, security, social amenities such as electricity and public playgrounds, etc. The public goods assist the normal operations of private business activities such as trade, transport, protection from external attacks, affordable education and healthcare.
Further, the government can assist companies and small enterprises directly through the provision of incentives and other activities which may include the offering of loans at zero or very small interest rates to boost business activities during adverse economic conditions such as economic depressions. Besides, the government can directly bail out collapsing companies due to bankruptcy or fraudulent activities to safeguard employment opportunities for its people. Public procurement is another function served by the government. It involves purchases or constructions of some infrastructure on behalf of the general public. These functions may include the development of stadiums, theatres, schools, hospitals, etc.
The activities involving free art events are closely related or are just part of the government responsibilities. The activities are related to the indirect impact on business and people in one way or the other. Organizing artistic and cultural or tourist attraction events in the city of Nantes influences investments in the hospitality and tourism sector because as more people travel from across the world to Nantes, they will need transport, hotel and accommodation services. Thus, it is an investment which boosts business activities and increases expenditures and creates job opportunities even though the government does not benefit directly, but it raises income through increased taxes, revenue from new business permits, etc.
Moreover, the construction of performance centers like theatres falls under the public procurement portfolio. Besides, the Nantes administration supports businesses directly especially shop owners who seek government designers to draw some images on walls and entrances at subsidized fees unlike when they could get them from private designers. In general, the case of provision of free arts and cultural events in Nantes through provision necessary infrastructure is efforts by the government to put in place the conditions needed for businesses to develop. Further, there is evidence in the case study that there is a lot of efficiency in running operations in Nantes than other urban centers implying the commitment of the city council to promote business. Also, there is the case of free traffic as one can use any form of transport without any trouble further providing an enabling environment for entrepreneurship.
