Nantes' Free Public Art Events: Description, Target Customers, Circular Flow Of Income, And Government Activities

1).The case can be thought of as describing a product. Using information from the case and concepts from Block 4, Reading 31, describe the product that you think is being offered here.

2).Using two concepts from Block 4, Reading 30 and information that can be inferred from the case, describe who you think are the customers that Nantes is trying to attract and what their motivations for ‘buying’ are. 

3).Explain the concept of the circular flow of income. Using this concept, describe and discuss the effects of Nantes’ free public art events on the local economy of Nantes.

4).Describe the main activities pursued by government in mixed economic systems and provide examples about these activities related to the case study 

1.Description of the product

Products generally refer to the services and the goods that are offered by a certain company that might help to address the wants and the needs of the concerned clients. In the given case study the product in discussion is the cultural and the art festival that has been taking place in the city. According to the Jean Blaise, the artistic director and the cultural impresario who has been based in the city for almost 37 years till date, the free public art festival has given a new lease of life to the city of Nantes which had been scarred in a number of varied fields. In order to revive the city from its dying conditions, Blaise along with the then socialist mayor of the city, Jean-Marc Ayrault, took initiatives to revive the cultural activities in the city. They advised the organizers of the cultural events to organize cultural events that were open to all the people who wanted to participate in the program. The events were advised to be held at outdoor locations in order to ensure the openness of the event.

According to Harris and Schaefer (2017), the product does not necessarily have to be any material product. The services offered by a certain organization might also be referred to as the products that are offered by the concerned organization. The concept of the products offered by an organization might also refer to the ideas, events, and various other movements that are organized by a certain body of people. These products that deals with the various events and movements may be termed to be intangible products. The intangibility of the concerned products might make it difficult for the clients to evaluate the concerned service or product that is being offered to them. The products that are offered to the clients might be analyzed on three different levels like the core product, the actual product and the augmented product.

In the concerned case the product refers to the public contemporary art festivals that are said to have brought life back to the city of Nantes. This might be referred to an intangible product since the concerned product deals with an event that is known to be enhancing the cultural awakening of the city of Nantes (Dunmall 2016). This intangibility of the product had led to the consumers of the product, in this case the general people living in the French city of Nantes, to face difficulty in the evaluation of the services that the event had been offering to the city. The core product that the event offers is the beautification of the city. In this case, the actual product refers to the conducted event itself. The benefits of organizing such an event had led to the beautification of the city that had been scarred by the wars that had taken place in the twentieth century. The augmented product in this case might be considered to be the various types of the contemporary art forms that might be developed by the participating artists in order to return the city the beauty that it must possess.

Target customers

2.Target customers

Consumers of a certain product or service generally refer to the people or the groups of the society who have been targeted by the concerned company during the manufacture of the product. A business organization must have a great understanding of the buying behavior of the target customers of the company in order to be successful in the long run. The target market, in this case, comprises of the artists who have expressed their interest in the participation in the concerned festival. The various artists and the street theatre artists who have been participating in the event organized by the various organization might be considered to be the target customers of the event. The organizers of the Nantes free public art festivals do aim to portray the city to be a very cultural city that might help the city to regain the cultural outset of the city. The targeted customers of the Nantes festival have a huge power of buying since the festival activities have been made free for access to all the people who have been residing in the country.

The customers might be said to have been consuming the products that are offered by the festival of Nantes. The consumption of the concerned products might refer to the pleasure that is derived from participating in the activities that the concerned customers might be taking part in. The customers might derive pleasure from their participation in the events that might be arranged as a part of a festival. The consumer might also find taking part in the events organized for the festivities to be a commodity. The consumption of the product might also lead to the construction of the identity of the concerned person. The product in some cases might relate to the events that might be organized in a certain event. These kinds of products help the customers to build a closer connect with their family members and connect to their national identities in a better manner (Harris and Schaefer, 2017).

The product in this case may refer to the art and cultural festivals that are conducted by the governing bodies of the city. The governing bodies of the city do emphasize on the fact that the cultural and the art events that are to be a part of the festival should all be arranged outdoors and should be free for all those who want to attend the events. According to the officials, the free events would help to attract a huge number of artists to the event, thereby leading the customers to possess a high buying power. The festival also helped to portray the artistic and creative aspects of the city in a very unique manner. The abandoned areas of the city turned into entertainment hubs. The entertainment activities that were organized by the administrative officials of the city also helped the citizens of the city to accept the fact that the steps that were being taken by the mayor and the other officials helped in showcasing their talent to the world which in turn would help the improvising of the economic conditions of the city. The Nantes festivals help to manage both the tourism industry and the cultural upliftment of the city. These festivals have managed to bring about a huge change in the attitude of the common people who reside in the city thereby aiding the growth of the city.

Circular flow of income. Effects of the free public art events on the local economy of Nantes.

3.Circular flow of income. Effects of the free public art events on the local economy of Nantes.

The circular flow of income refers to a model that eases the understanding of the process of the circulation of the income among the various members that are present within the society. In this model of economy, the majority of the exchanges that do take place within the economic system are represented as the flow of the concerned goods, money and services between the various economic agents. The key elements that constitute the model are the households and the various organizations that are present within a certain economy. The circular flow of income is an economic model that aids the understanding of the circulation of the income that takes place between the organizations and the households. The households refer to the various individual economic units that are present within the concerned economy. The households might comprise of a single person or a group of persons who might share the same residential address. The organizations refer to those units of the economic system that help the households by providing them with the various goods and services that they might need. The payment modes used by the various organizations might vary from the salaries and wages to the rents and the dividends against the shares purchased and other such ways. The households might expect these payments against various production factors that are provided by the households. These factors might include the facilities in the fields of the capital, labor and land (Sancino 2017). These payments are generally termed as the factor payments in the model of the circular flow of income.  

The main events of the Nantes’ free public art events do help the local economy of the country. The various events at the cultural events that are organized as a part of the free public art festival of Nantes do attract a huge number of foreigners. These foreign visitors do help the economy of the country to face a rise. There has been a rise in the number of the business organizations that have been moving to the French city so as to increase the revenue that they might generate in their concerned business. The city of Nantes has been observed to be one of the fastest growing cities in France wherein the levels of the unemployment have been low in a consistent manner (Dunmall 2016). The corporate organizations seem to choose this French city due to the creativity that the city dwellers have demonstrated through their participation in the various events that have been organized by the administrative officials of the city. The dwellers of the city might assist the concerned organizations by renting them spaces to set up the offices and the other infrastructure that they might need in order to spread the cultural festivals that are organized in the city so as to attract more people from outside the country which might aid the improvement in the economic conditions of the city. The geographical conditions of the city do enable the use of the environment friendly transportation system which also helps to attract foreign residents to the city thereby increasing the population of the city.

Key activities that are pursued by the government in case of mixed economic systems

4.Key activities that are pursued by the government in case of the mixed economic systems. 

The governmental bodies of any state or region might affect the economy of the same through various monetary and fiscal policies that it might levy on the residents of the state. There might be instances which portray the engagement of the business organizations with the government in a direct or an indirect manner. The key activities that are pursued by the governments in the mixed economy systems are the establishment of a framework of the law, providing services to the concerned residents of the state. The governmental bodies are also responsible for supporting the business organizations in a direct manner through the processes pertaining to the advocating and the financing conditions. One of the first activities on the part of the government is the establishment of a good and effective legislation for the members who have been residing in the concerned state. These laws might include the legalities that might ensure the environmental conditions of the state. These laws might deal with the protecting the environment of the state and thereby ensuring the healthy condition of the concerned residents. The next activity that should be taken care of by the government is providing the residents of the concerned state with the amenities that they might need for the successful continuation of their daily activities. The governing bodies of the concerned state might also need to provide the various operating business organizations with the quality infrastructure that they need in order to function in a smooth manner. The government might also need to provide financial support to the concerned business organization at times of need. The business organizations are often found to take financial support from the concerned governmental body in order to maintain their functionality (Sancino 2017). The governmental bodies might also assume the role of advocates in cases where other states might be involved with the concerned corporate organization.  

In case of the Nantes free public art festivals, the governmental bodies played a very important role in the resurrection of the French city. The mayor of the city had played a key role in the transformation of the city to the present condition of Nantes. The city had turned into an almost dead city after the wars in the twentieth century. The government officials took the initiative of recovering the city and disclosed two main rules that every event needed to abide by. The rules stated that the events that were to be held in the city should not charge a participation fee and should not be held indoors (Dunmall 2016). These measures, according to the mayor and the other concerned officials would let all the residents of the city participate in the events thereby enlivening the city. These measures also seemed to attract the art enthusiasts from the neighboring cities and even the foreign states which in turn helped in the generation of the revenue. The involvement of the residents of the city also attracted a number of various organizations that dealt mainly with the art and other cultural activities. This also helped in the growth of the city and ultimately led to the resurrection of Nantes. 

References:

Dunmall, G. 2016. The resurrection of Nantes: how free public art brought the city back to life. [online] the Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/jul/12/resurrection-nantes-france-how-free-public-art-brought-city-back-to-life [Accessed 21 Jan. 2018].

Harris, F. and Schaefer, A. 2017. Block 4 - Marketing (B100 - An introduction to business and management #4). 2nd ed. United Kingdom: The Open University, pp.5-120.

Sancino, A. 2017. Block 5 - The economic and political context (B100 - An introduction to business and management #5). 2nd ed. United Kingdom: The Open University, pp.5-136