Critical issues in the marketing of cultural goods: The decisive influence of cultural transmission

This article presents a review of the literature on the main factors involved in cultural transmission (family influence, arts education, peer and media influence) and how they shaped the evolution of the consumer behaviour of heritage site visitors. This evolution constitutes a major refutation of Bourdieu's perspective on cultural transmission, on the strong differentiation between high culture and popular culture as well as on the a priori principles of cultural democratization on which several heritage sites are based.Rather, the analysis argues that contemporary consumers come from a plurality of social worlds and that they are subject to heterogeneous socialization processes. For the heritage sector, this results in programming choices reflecting cultural pluralism and using popular culture to make high culture sites more accessible. Finally, the article concludes that this paradigm shift requires that heritage sites to modify their marketing approach, highlighting the need to target today's and tomorrow's consumers using a relational approach that exploits the complementarity of the digital universe in order to promote the actual, in-person experience of heritage goods.