Case Study Cultural Considerations of Shanghai Disneyland

Introduction The Walt Disney Company is an American diversified multinational mass media corporation. It is the largest media conglomerate in the world in terms of revenue. It generated US$ 42.278 billion in 2012. Disney was founded on October 16, 1923, by Walt and Roy Disney as the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio, and established itself as a leader in the American animation industry before diversifying into live-action film production, television, and travel. The Walt Disney Company operates as five primary units and segments: The Walt Disney Studios or Studio Entertainment, which includes the company's film, recording label, and theatrical divisions; Parks and Resorts, featuring the company's theme

The case “Euro Disney: First 100 days” talks about the issues faced by the Walt Disney Company when expanding to international borders. The case begins with the history of Disneyland and then describes the reasons behind its success and expansion to various states across the country. It then describes the success of Tokyo Disneyland, first Disney theme park outside America and the factors affecting it.

Thank you for providing me with the opportunity to evaluate Disney and their international expansion, in particular, Hong Kong Disneyland. Disney’s international expansion over the past decades has been a mixture of successes and failures. When expanding globally, a corporation has to take into account many factors and work around the cultural, economic, and social differences for every region. Unfortunately, sometimes it is very difficult to satisfy and/or recognize all these factors. In the case study provided, insight was given on the ups and downs Disney faced during their global expansion and the different approaches that were taken.

“It’s a very different market for Disney in China — it’s a different culture, and their characters are not as well-known or popular here, and the ticket prices are high.”. The challenges faced by Shanghai Disney Resort are further explained below.

The Walt Disney Company has seen their share of success in taking their parks and resorts into global markets. “60 years ago, the first Disney theme park opened, in California and was the brainchild of Walt Disney himself, who was motivated by the lack of entertainment options available to him and his two young daughters.” (Forbes, 2016). Disneyland California penetrated the market rapidly, and its popularity led to the opening of Disney World in Florida, followed by global expansion in Tokyo, Paris, and Hong Kong. Their latest expansion came in June 2016, on a 963 acres’ site in Shanghai, China (Xu, 2012). After one year in operation, Shanghai Disneyland is outpacing their most optimistic projections, and the park’s

In a business perspective, the oriental and western cultures remain a huge difference. Low-context societies such as American egalitarian culture, they emphasize on logic and facts, verbal messages are more direct and concise, individualism and extremely tolerant to changes. However, high-context societies such as Chinese hierarchy culture, they prefer non-verbal methods to express meaningful communications, group-oriented, and pay more attention to interpersonal relationships during business interactions. For example, a successful business interaction will count on interpersonal relationships among businesses and government. On the other hand, business dealings can be completely transactional with Americans, without building relationships to do so.

As we know, Disneyland is very success in U.S. when the first Disneyland built in Anaheim, California on 17 July, 1995. After some debate about the site for a European theme park, Michael Eisner and Jacques Chirac signed a contract for the building of s Disney theme park at Marne-la-Vallee, a region of sunflower and sugar-beet farmland and small villages located twenty miles east of Paris (Janis, F., 1998, P.247). However, the European Disneyland was not as such success as they expected. This essay going to regards the main issues in opening the Euro Disneyland and compare the French cultural with American cultural by using Hofstede’s cultural Dimensions and Trompenaars ‘s cultural dimensions. This essay will then end by

Hong Kong Disneyland has created a culture for their employees with open communication with their managers

Three years after its opening in September 2005, Hong Kong Disneyland had yet to gather

Geert Hofstede developed the widely applied Hofstede’s cultural dimensions, which mainly focuses on how different countries with different cultural backgrounds handle different anthropological problems that occur in cross-cultural communication (Hofstede 1980). The first five Hofstede’s dimensions will be discussed in following paragraphs. It should be clear that there is no good and bad between two elements in each dimension since every culture has its unique features and ways to function.

Disney’s target market consists mainly of family-oriented Asian tourists, primarily those from mainland China, Taiwan, and Southeast Asia. The mainland China accounted for large number of incoming visitors. At the time of Hong Kong Disneyland’s establishment, Hong Kong already enjoyed booming business and tourism sectors, but the government believed that the latter would be invigorated by the creation of a then absent “family tourist” niche. Below are the

Even in the United States, Disneyworld (Florida) and Disneyland (California) vary in there social forces. Cast Members (Disney’s term for employees) in CA are trained to be friendly and greet every guest, while in FL they are trained to only greet guests who seek them out. The political, legal, and regulatory factors again, vary from theme park to theme park. The parks in the United States have more restrictions than say those of Hong Kong, China. In the U.S, minors (age 15-17) are only allowed to work 20 hours a week. In Hong Kong, young persons (ages 15-17) are allowed to work up to 48 hours a week. Regulatory factors such as this differ in each region. The Walt Disney Company Parks and Resorts has quite an extreme variety of natural environments. The weather in Florida for example can get in the 100’s regularly whereas in California it can get as cold as the low 50’s. These weather conditions actually are a big factor in guests determining which park they want to visit. Technology seems to stay consistent between most of the theme parks. In fact, many of the theme parks have some of the same rides at their parks. The global forces actually can create threats to the company. The addition of the newest theme park to the company, Shanghai Disney, took several years to become accepted. This has been common throughout the duration of The Walt Disney Company. Many people vote against a new theme park or resort because of the crowds that it

The main problem of the Euro Disney was that all calculations made by Walt Disney Company were based on parks in the USA and Japan considering Europe as a mass of people rather than many countries with different languages and cultures. Americans see theme parks as a destination where you can stay between 4 and 6 days. In Europe, Euro Disney was seen as a part of the experience when traveling to Paris. The cost was also a problem for the park. A night in a hotel inside the park costs as much as a high quality hotel in the French capital. So, given that the park was located 40 minutes by car from Paris, visitors preferred to spend a night in the romantic city of Paris.

Disneyland in Hong Kong- Good or Bad? The aim of this essay is to discuss the advantages and disadvantages in having Disneyland coming into Hong Kong. Disneyland is a famous theme part, with outlets all around the world, including Japan, America and France. And now, Disney decided that the next theme part it is going to locate itself is Hong Kong- is how beneficial will it be to Hong Kong? The diagram on the left shows the proposed location of Disney land in Hong Kong. It will be situated at the west of Hong Kong island, in Penny?s Bay. Land reclamation will be used if extra land is needed for Disney to expand in the future.

Hong Kong was a prime tourist destination for a large number of people from the mainland. Disney focused on people from mainland, the local residents and