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Disney Competitive Strategy Essay

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Walt Disney Company was founded in 1923 and now has become a world leader in the entertainment industry. Diversification of products and services is a strategy that Disney clearly focused on in order to establish a competitive advantage in the entertainment market. Over the years it has diversified into 5 different business lines showing that it’s ‘magic’ comes from its many synergies. Over the years it has developed a very strong and well known "brand-name" over many years and its products are more ‘Disney’ than an actual product. This has lead to high brand loyalty as for most people it has no substitute and given the organization the ability to adapt when business lines perform poorly. e.g. when theme parks were not doing well, new …show more content…

Disney executives had a decentralized management approach and encouraged ideas from employees within the organization through meetings like the “Gong-Show”. Furthermore, it encouraged that every time a new product was released, a presentation should be made to all other divisions in a bid to see how they could also tie themselves into the picture. E.g. if Aladdin was released, the theme parks might open a ride for it, consumer products would produce apparel and toys, internet and direct marketing would enable direct sales of the products and media networks might broadcast the show or promote the film. (Figure 1 has synergies connected with the different business processes) 2) In my opinion Disney’s core capability was its operational control, low cost strategy and its ability to diversify into mutually beneficial businesses which helped it in creating multiple revenue streams from branded characters. Disney’s ability to expand in markets which helped creative thinking helped in increasing its capabilities as it was through them that the operational control was so successful. It was based on a horizontal and decentralized and informal management approach. Ideas were born from within the departments and are worked-up throughout the relatively low hierarchy, where the final decisions are made. The management focused on group creativity and team-work. The most creative employees took part is ‘Gong Shows’ to come-up with

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