A Proposal on the Performing Arts Center's Membership Management System Using Face Recognition Technology

2-1 The concept of face recognition technology and the performing arts centre's membership management system

Face recognition has two functions including face verification and face identification. The former aims to determine whether two given faces are the same person. The latter is to find the identity of a given face in a set of known faces. Recently, many deep-running algorithms have shown excellent results in these two face recognition functions.

Huang et al. proposed learning hierarchical representations for face verification with convolutional deep belief networks [5].

Taigman et al. proposed a three-dimensional face model based on facial alignment algorithm and facial expression learned by DNN of 9 layers [6]. Sun proposed a so-called Deep hidden function(DeepID) for face verification [7].

In the last decades, image classification has been an active research topic [8]. There are several methods that proposed, including spatial pyramid matching [9], Bayesian hierarchical model [10], part-based model R [11], and sparse coding [12].

However, these methods use hand-crafted features that cannot capture raw pixel values ​or data-based representations of specific input data. In these days, deep running has shown very good results in image classification.

This technology can be applied to artistic and cultural fields. The membership management system in performing arts centre is one of the marketing strategies to increase the loyalty of the audience who mainly purchase the art products of the performing arts. It is a strategy to establish an intimate and friendly relationship by maintaining the relationship with the audience in the long term and providing a better quality of artistic products by collecting diverse customer's opinions. In particular, the membership management system plays a role in inducing the development of new audiences in the performing arts and securing various information of existing and new audiences. Through effective communication with audiences, performing arts in performing arts center can be induced.

The membership management system is intended to give an audience the chance to enjoy the culture through the best services and various benefits for the performing arts. So, it is possible to find the ultimate goal and to purchase the ticket continuously or maintain the fixed audience.

In general, performing arts centers are attracting members who are interested in performing arts, although there are many other cultural and artistic genres. In order to increase the satisfaction of the audience and the loyalty of the permanent audience, performing arts centre collects the personal information about the audience including tendency or preference toward the performing arts. Therefore, it is possible to provide various benefits to the audience when planning and operating the various programs in performing art centre through the DB of the audience, and it can be essential for the stable operation of the performing arts center[13]. The operation of the performing arts center by collecting a database of the audience can be defined as the operation of customer relationship management(CRM). However, the purpose of CRM is not merely to acquire and develop new audiences but also to obtain financial benefits. In other words, it includes step-by-step growth from a loyal audience through an acquisition of new audiences and purchase tickets for performance work with a high quality and quantity [14].

According to the Baek(2012), even if some of the public performing arts centers at Seoul tend to use the membership management system, it is difficult to manage and analyze the membership information that can be used as a marketing strategy due to limited information of audiences[15].

Therefore, it is necessary to construct loyal members by recognizing the favourite genres of the audience and reflecting them to the performing arts hall as much as possible in order to manage the members more effectively. In other words, it is also a strategic management method that can increase the financial income portion of the performing arts center.

2-2 The merits of a performing arts center 's mileage membership management system

Mileage membership system among various performing arts center 's membership system is a more efficient management system to maintain the loyalty of customers continuously. The mileage system refers to a marketing strategy that continuously maintains and strengthens consumer's loyalty to the company by returning part of its profits from selling its products or services to customers in the form of points reserve, coupon, or cash. In other words, it is defined as a system that manages and operates a customer as a membership system and provides mileage according to the customer's usage record points, and then provides corresponding benefits based on predetermined criteria when the accumulated mileage reaches a predetermined standard.

In addition, the mileage system provides corresponding compensation and maintains a constant and regular relationship as the customer's ongoing transaction or cumulative transaction volume increases. Therefore, it has a loyalty to the company or product. According to the customer's continuous transaction, the company obtains the basic information about the customer, and the customer can obtain information about the product which they prefer. Moreover, the identified information can be used to maintain a lasting relationship with the customer to prevent the customer from leaving and to re-activate the existing customer.

In general, mileage type classification can be divided into classification depending on the earning method, the usage method, and criteria for the standardization and universality of the benefit that the mileage company provides to the client.

Table 1.

Mileage type with the same value as cash

For example, there is the point system of LG Arts Center. LG Arts Center does not have a membership fee or annual fee, unlike other performing arts center members' membership system, and operates a membership system that earns discounts depending on how many time audiences watched performing arts through the accumulation of mileage points called 'Art Points'. Membership can be subscribed through the Internet. If the audience register, 5% of art points will be accumulated when the customer watched to the performing arts. <Table 2> shows a detailed description of Art Points. In terms of unique features, an audience can get free meal coupons for art points instead of discounts from an affiliated company.

Table 2.

Membership System of LG Arts Center

As it mentioned earlier, the mileage system is a marketing strategy that aims to increase the future value of a company and to maintain and enhance consumer's loyalty to the company. In other words, mileage system is a system that provides mileage according to customers' usage results and provides various rewards to consumers based on mileage accumulated based on certain criteria. Due to the diverse needs of consumers, companies are trying to emphasize the need to maintain existing customers rather than strategies to attract new customers.

In particular, it is wise to continue to sell products and services to existing customers in order to increase the profit of the company against limited consumers [18]. The mileage system has two main purposes [19]. Firstly, by providing corresponding compensation in proportion to the customer's continuous transaction or transaction volume, the customer is kept loyal to the company by continuously maintaining the transaction. The second one is to maintain customer relations with customers by acquiring customer information to join the mileage system and providing services to individual customers.

This can prevent the customer from leaving in advance and fulfill the purpose of restoring already existing customers.

3-1 A Proposal of the Performing Arts Center's Membership Management System

The purpose of this study is to manage efficiently membership of the performance performing arts center by applying face recognition technology to a performing arts center 's membership management system. This can be an opportunity to break away from the performing arts market, which is shrinking due to the economic downturn and the enforcement of the Improper Solicitation and Graft Act.

According to the survey of the performing art in 2017, rate of operation in performing arts center decreased to 60.8% in 2016 more than that of 2015, and it decreased with the gap of 11.7% comparing that of 2013. Therefore, it is time to manage to establish an intimate and friendly relationship with audiences in order to retain existing members and secure new members in terms of the performing arts center. Of course, there are various ways to do this, however, it is necessary to attract audience members by using face recognition technology to focus on 'fusion of technology and art' which is becoming a hot topic these days. As a research method, this study use face recognition technology via using Microsoft Project Oxford. This program is a project that uses Microsoft's machine learning technology so that anyone can use the machine learning technology API if registry. That is, it is an open source program that anyone can use.

This is a demonstration program, but it is of utility value of that as it gives the impression that Microsoft is not lagging behind in the field of machine learning through Project Oxford. Of course, it is also possible to use a more effective paid program than Project Oxford(MS) in the performing arts center. But, it is choosed by the study in that everyone can choose to use easily the program. The proposal for the management of a theater using face recognition technology is as follows. This is a method of recognizing the facial emotion of all the visitors entering the hall and adding or subtracting the mileage points in real time according to the emotional emotion.

Due to the fact that the general performing arts center 's membership management system is a regular membership system, it can be divided into a free membership system and a paid membership system. The former only collects and manages the simple information of members, and regularly distributes newsletters and promotional pamphlet to the program.

On the other hand, the latter can pay an annual fee for a season, receive discounts on their chosen performances, and purchase tickets in preference to regular audiences. Most performing arts centers offer benefits such as ticket discounts, free program books, free parking tickets, as well as graded services. However, this study utilizes not the regular membership management system but the aforementioned mileage member management system.

In other words, it is the membership management system of performing arts center that uses face recognition technology. Face recognition technology has already reached a stage where the emotion of a human face can be quantified and displayed through images. In particular, a program called "Microsoft Project Oxford" developed by Microsoft Corporation is a project that uses machine learning to obtain useful data from photographs, voice, and video [20]. According to Microsoft, this program provides a total of 8 emotions (anger, disdain, disgust, fear, happiness, expression, sadness, surprise) and also it shows numerically the data and consequently, the highest figure can be grasped as the final emotion. There are two types like Table 3 and Table 4 depending on the gender. ¹⁾

Table 3.

Facial recognition of man in facial emotion recognition program (Example)

Table 4.

Facial recognition of woman in facial emotion recognition program (Example)

In Table 3 and Table 4, there is an image in which the numerical values are clearly high and an image that has the various emotions with various numerical values. For example, in Table 3, No 3's image has very small differences, such as Contempt 0.38073, Happiness 0.37462, and Neutral 0.23290. In Table 4, even if Sadness 0.67135 is the highest emotion in image 4, there is a very small numerical difference.

Therefore, since the emotional state in which there is little difference between these numerical values can be derived, the definition of the numerical value for each emotion is arbitrarily determined as follows.

When the maximum emotion value is judged to be 1, the emotion value that does not exceed the minimum value of 0.5 is not included in the mileage point accrual. The reason is that it can not be judged that the emotion having a numerical value of only 0.1 in a state in which the emotion of the numerical value does not exceed 50% does not include all the various emotions. Consequently, when these numerical values ​​are derived, any mileage points neither (-) nor (+) should be applied. Table 5 shows the mileage points according to emotions.

Table 5.

Mileage point system according to emotion

This face recognition technology can be applied to a performing arts center 's membership management system. That is, it recognizes the facial emotion of all audiences entering and leaving at the theater and adds or subtracts the mileage points in real time according to the emotional emotion. Table 5 shows the 'method of mileage point system according to emotions'. Since there are 7 negative factors and 1 positive factor among the total 8 emotions, for example, we imposed +100 points for positive feeling 'happiness' and also -10 points for all feeling except for happiness respectively.

Existing members follow this rule and potential members who do not join to performing arts center will be charged +10 points for happiness and will not be penalized for other emotion recognition. As mentioned before, due to the fact that potential members are not members, after joining the final membership, they need to apply the same rules as existing members. The accumulated mileage point system offers the opportunity to use cash as a bonus according to the various mileage addition and deduction details of the actual performing arts center members. In the case of existing members, performing arts center can provide various discount coupons or free invitation tickets as marketing strategy depending on member's record that has watched performing arts with similar genres or purchased food and beverages in the performing arts hall. Of course, if an audience can share the membership information DB among the performing arts centers or organize the network, they can enjoy more diverse cultural and artistic facilities by using mileage points.

3-2 A proposal for a system flowchart of performing arts center membership management

In order to understand the proposals in the previous chapter, this study presents a flow diagram of a performing arts center membership management system using face recognition technology as shown in Figure 1. Flowchart Figure 1 is divided into the application of face recognition technology and analysis of membership information, and there are overlapping areas. As shown in Figure 1, the performing arts center 's membership management system using face recognition technology is divided into an application of face recognition technology and analysis of membership information, and there are overlapping areas. First of all, in the case of existing member, an officer in marketing team are able to check their record that has watched performing arts by analyzing theater's member DB with detection of facial feature, recognizing audience from many crowds in performing arts center. Secondly, in terms of a potential member(non-registered member), the facial feature is detected and registered arbitrarily using the guest ID. Afterward, emotion recognition is performed based on the detected face, and member mileage is charged according to feelings such as anger, contempt, discomfort, fear, happiness, indifference, sadness, surprise.

Fig 1.

System flowchart using proposed face recognition

On the other hand, the analysis of membership information is carried out from distinguishing existing members and potential members by utilizing a performing arts center's database, and then the analysis of the second member information is progressed while recognizing emotions. Although it is necessary to make a system that the existing members could be added to points for the happiness and subtracted to points in other feelings, the potential members could be imposed on points for the happiness without deducting points from any feelings. This is, because, as mentioned above, potential members can collect all mileage when a potential member becomes a new member through the offline membership process at the end of the analysis of the third member information, and when the member does not want to join, all the mileage will be disappeared.

3-3 Expected effect of membership management system via the proposed face recognition technology

Performing arts center can achieve the following effects through the proposed mileage membership management system based on facial emotion recognition. Firstly, it is possible to develop various event services by inducing members' interest in the field of face recognition technology as compared with the general member management system. For example, a day of laughter, a day of happiness, a day of sadness, etc. may be set for each day of the week, and consequently, a person who has highly added corresponding points of feeling may be given a chance to experience various cultural and arts programs with free and discount coupons. As a result, the member could increase the loyalty of a performing arts center. Also, performing arts center can give audiences who have never felt happy within a limited time a high mileage point as an event. Or, whenever the audience feels happy feelings, performing arts center can issue a campaign event that can be donated to a charitable organization in 1:1 matching between audience's points and campaign's event points. Of course, it could have positive effects on the fields of culture and arts from earning mileage points through face recognition technology and using them.

Secondly, it can automatically raise donations via the face recognition technology. In general, fundraising is a very difficult and cumbersome task, since it means that paid up members of the performing arts centre directly tend to increase their loyalty of a higher level. But, if members of the performing arts center use to utilize the mileage system points as donations so that it will be possible to promote the donation of more active members of the performing arts centre.

Thirdly, if a mileage point system using face recognition technology is applied to museums, galleries as well as national public art centers, many customers could have the opportunity to experience various artistic and cultural programs through 'Art Passes[21]' system that currently provides the public audience with discount benefits.

In conclusion, the performing arts center can directly grasp the preference genre of the members by means of the mileage membership management system, and keep the relationship with the members by subdividing the information they have gained. Consequently, it can provide the member with artistic and cultural programs of a high quality depending on member's tendency. In other words, it is possible to encourage and induce participation in various events such as exhibitions, festivals, etc. based on the member information at performing arts center. Furthermore, audiences will be more curious and more interested in the performing arts centre that uses the special technique of face recognition. This means that the performing arts center will be able to draw the result of profit because of the high ticket purchase of the audience

In addition, it is possible to provide a potential audience with a chance to attract a fixed audience by transmitting a positive image to the audience. Therefore, if the performing arts center actively promotes the combination of face recognition technology and mileage point system, it can provide a more stable audience by making it possible for the audience to utilize the performing arts center continuously. Furthermore, the membership system that utilizes this face recognition technology not only becomes a basis for raising the profit of the program operation through the formation of the fixed audience group by attracting interest but also forms the basis for securing the potential applicant for the financial resources. Fixed audiences in the form of membership are most likely to participate positively in most programs, with great interest in performing arts centers and programs, and are more likely to respond positively to support requests from performing arts centers[11].