Disney's Poor Performance

Imagine going to a magical park with your family and friends where you don’t have to worry about a thing. You can eat anywhere you want to, do anything you want to, and create once-in-a-lifetime memories. Everyone is happy and free to do anything they want to. It’s the place to bond and spend time with loved ones. Going there would make your day. This was the vision that Walt Disney had years before Disneyland was created. He wanted to create a magical park, “The Happiest Place On Earth.”

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.

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.

We are here to discuss the “Theme Park” project that we were set to complete. To date we are 40% complete with the project. We currently do not have any actual costs associated with the project so we can assume that they are in order. However, I think that we should still look into the matter since we were given a budget guideline to follow.

In order for Disney to remain a dominate player within all of its markets, the company must focus on key aspects of its internal environment. Disney must concentrate on aspects such as core competencies, corporate governance, and synergies to assist in forming a sustainable competitive advantage.

Be prepared to discuss Activities • • Discussions Evaluation • 3 • None Reading(s) o Chapter 4: Social and Cultural Environments o Chapter 5: The Political, Legal, and Regulatory Environments o Case 4-1 Disney Adapts to Cultural Differences e-Activity o Research the marketing mistakes that were made at Euro Disney. Be prepared to discuss. o Go to the Transparency International Website, located at http://www.transparency.org/, to review the global corruption Preparation 20

“Between 1931 and 1968, Walt Disney won 32 Academy Awards and still holds the record for the most individual Academy Awards won.” (Walt Disney(1901-1966) ,2013 para. 25) Walt Disney has made an incredible amount of fantastic movies, music and characters that we will always remember. But what were the impacts of these to society? How does Disney affect children, adults and the LGBT community all around the world? Over the years, Walt Disney has changed lives of millions all around the world whether it may be his catchy music, beautiful animation, or his memorable characters.

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

To keep maintain balance between Tradition of Disney and French culture. Its structure has change to adopt French culture. The vice president in charge of park operations and marketing at euro Disney taken number of steps. The name was change from Euro Disney to paris Disneyland, so that French would be more receptive.

Disney parks are known for their clean and well designed atmosphere. However, they felt short in providing the same experiences to Euro Disney customers. Euro Disney failed to deliver the high level of customer service standard to Disney theme parks are known for their, as well as failing to provide the service needs that were unique to the European market.

Walt Disney overestimated the magic that was to be in introducing Europe's most lavish and extravagant theme park in April of 1992. The fiscal year 1992-1993 brought EuroDisney a loss of nearly $1 billion.

Secondary things such as leisure and traveling would not be in the list of the people’s spending. Beside, during its first year operation, Euro Disney could not compete with its competitors such as Parc Asterix which had undergone a major renovation, the Olympics in Barcelona, and the world’s fair in Seville.

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.

Given that a vacation to a theme park is more of a luxury good and not a necessity, people will not spend their money on it unless they have extra disposable income or high purchasing power for they would rather use the money on basic necessities first. As such, demand for a vacation at a theme park is highly price elastic. This means that when prices increase, demand for the product will decrease more than proportionately and the organization will experience a decline in profits. On the other hand, when prices decreases, demand for the product will increase more than proportionately and the organization will experience an increase in profits. As such, theme park organizations need to be very careful about their pricing strategies for they can result in drastic effects on total revenue and profits which the organization can earn.