Case Study : Disneyland 's Consumer Focused Initiative Essay

Similar problems occurred in Disneyland Tokyo, where management didn’t even think about the height difference of Asians and Americans, resulting in too high public phones for Japanese guests. Concluding it is clear that the American company originally tried to implement a standardization strategy, when launching theme parks in other countries, without taking the local culture into consideration. Country specific procedures and regulations, and different local customer preferences forced Disney to adapt features of the US theme park business model to the local markets.

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.

Euro Disney marketers have recognized a trend. People are going to theme parks during the weekends for adults as well as children entertainment. Indeed, there is an existing need for entertainment of this kind. Therefore, an opportunity exists in the European market that Euro Disney could have taken advantage of.

Today, the Walt Disney Company is highly diversified - it is divided into 5 major business segments: Studio Entertainment, Parks and Resorts, Media Networks, Consumer Products, and Internet & Direct Marketing. Since this paper stresses on only one strategic business unit of Walt Disney, Parks and Resorts, the following discussion of the elements of marketing mix will be with respect to this SBU only.

The Walt Disney Company has created theme parks throughout the world for guests to undergo a specific experiences that recalls the guests’ inner child through rides, visuals, and music. Disney has proved to be more than just a theme park; it is portrayed as a “world” or “land” of acceptance and integration of all cultures into one place. The universality aspect is what draws people in from different countries to visit the parks. Ultimately, the Disney parks are based off of two key concepts: commoditization and Americanization. Since Disney is an imagined utopia, guests buy into, literally and figuratively, the commodities and experiences it offers. Through music and visuals, Disney intertwines a message of Americanization through a single world culture that the guests accept. Disney’s limited understanding of cultures became much more apparent as theme parks were erected in different countries with cultural values that differ from American norms. Disney is a utopian society that exposes a narrow interpretation of the different cultures throughout the world.

The Walt Disney Company is a diversified international entertainment company (Disney, 2010) with ownership of many media outlets including radio, cinema, television and literature as well as consumer products such as stationary and toys. The Disney brand has huge recognition globally especially in the category of children’s entertainment with over 80 years of productions in this sector. With an obvious predominance and market leadership in children’s entertainment and consumerism, The Disney Company has an unparalleled capability to reach

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

Globalization is forcing all companies, large and small, to focus on a larger competitive landscape. For many companies hypercompetition arises and they are left with stunted growth while competing with other businesses across the globe. Fortunately, Disney has constructed one of the world’s most recognizable and beloved brands in the entire world. To understand the external environment in which Disney competes, we must first discern which market we wish to analyze. Disney owns a plethora of companies across an extensive list of industries including publishing, game production, retail, theme parks, and software. By far the two largest segments of Disney’s business are its parks/resorts and media networks; those will be

Culture difference will influence the number of tourists and the acceptance level of customers. Euro Disney followed the brand policies to the English instructions only, no wine providing in the theme park, high price of ticket, and standardized merchandise and food items，consequently wide spread dissatisfaction among the customers. When a new brand enters different cultures, it is inevitable for customers in new market to repel it or spend much time to accept it，so the new brand should be brought closer to local culture by providing a platform to interact with the brand in customer’s terms. Also culture different will bring different consumption patterns, Europeans are likely to spend reasonable price on entertainment, so the price of Euro-Disney will be too high to accept and decrease the number of tourists in Euro-Disney. Different culture has different drinking and eating habits，Euro-Disney forbad drinking wine in lunch time，but most French like to drink wine when they enjoy their meal. All of these elements deriving from culture difference will influence the revenue of Euro-Disney and even result in the failure of Euro-Disney.

Walt-Disney is popular all over the world yet the social aspects of America’s standards are vastly different than those overseas. Disney struggled to understand what those differences were and for three years they were unable to turn a profit in France. (Cite Book) The citizens of France still saw Disney as an American icon and they were in opposition to it being a focal point in the French community. Disney changed this opinion by renaming the park Disneyland Paris, lowering its price of admission, opening new rides, and launching a massive marketing campaign. (cite book) This worked and the park began to turn around. When it switched its focus to Hong Kong it employed its newly learned tactics and began by focusing on honoring its cultures

Managing the Disney brand has become an increasingly difficult task since Walt’s death. Times have changed and it is becoming more difficult as Disney grows to stick to the “timeless family values” it was founded on as times become more controversial and sensitive social

Disney has become a marketing goliath and the #1 entertainment company in the US. They have been able to develop a creativity-driven philosophy that over time was tempered by financial responsibility and that benefitted from powerful synergies between its divisions. From the very beginning, Disney has been synonymous with innovation within the children’s entertainment industry, from their introduction of animations with synchronized audio, full-length animated feature films and then later into theme parks and on-ice and Broadway shows. One important element of Disney’s success was the extent to which they integrated and expanded into different

For my final paper I chose to discuss The Walt Disney Company. Since the Company is so large and made up of four primary business segments, I decided to focus on one particular segment: Parks and Resorts. This segment is composed of the theme parks, cruise-line, and vacation club resorts.

"Cultures are dynamic and change occurs when resistance slowly yields to acceptance so the basis for resistance becomes unimportant or forgotten"[2]. Which means that on the part of the European community we are certain to see compromise, but over a period of time. Disney too has to reconcile with the environment it has settled in. We read in the case that Disney does ultimately mend its ways. Making room for continuous change is the best way to go about ones business.