Marketing Paper

A business must be highly competitive in the business markets today. For a business to grow successfully, remain sustainable, and competitive a business needs a good understanding of a marketing plan, and the knowhow to put the concepts to work for the business achieving a successful marketing strategy. Remaining successful when an economic growth has leveled out shows a sustainable business. Competitors that follow the same marketing concepts will need to develop a good marketing plan, and implement the concepts into a marketing strategy to remain a competitive business. A good marketing strategy contains a marketing plan describing the products offered, and taking into account

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 mission of the Walt Disney Company is to be one of the world’s leading producers and providers of entertainment and information. Using our portfolio of brands to differentiate our content, services and consumer products, we seek to develop the most creative, innovative and profitable entertainment experiences and related products in the world” (According to "Walt Disney Company Mission Statement" (2011)

Discuss what is meant by the term “customer orientation”. Illustrate with examples how companies demonstrate their customer orientation by reference to at least two elements of the marketing mix.

It’s a known fact that Starbucks is one of the leading brand in the market.When we analyse the market we find that Mcdonald 's and Dunkin are the competitors in the same product segment. So comparing Starbucks with these competitors will throw light on its grey areas, process and competitive edge in the market.

The Walt Disney Company’s business model is to create value by providing family entertainment to people all over the world. The company owns television networks and various production studios as well as many different parks and resorts that provide families with the opportunities of creating memories. The company also offers consumer products and interactive programs that provide families with further entertainment. By offering consumer products like toys, DVD’s, books, and many others, the company goes into the customer’s home and provides permanent entertainment. The company’s eleven parks and forty-four resorts are spread all over the world and provide the company with customer value

The success of movies and television programs were due to diversity and distribution. It does its own distribution and targets several markets from children to adults. Finally, the Disney character consumer product sector, which includes clothing, home goods, and toys, has been an extremely important asset to the company. For example, by establishing deals such as an agreement with Mattel, Disney was able to manufacture more than 14,000 Disney licensed products. Furthermore, Disney expanded it’s retailing by opening up Disney stores.

He also correctly predicted that television would be an important medium, and introduced the highly popular “Mickey Mouse Club” in 1955. Finally, Disney correctly bet big on entering theme parks with Disneyland in 1955. Imperfect Mobility and Co-specialization Disney’s strong legal protection makes it nearly impossible for competitors to copy or imitate Disney’s characters. In addition, the parts comprising the Disney whole would be of less valuable to a poacher than they are to Disney. This is because, for Disney, the sum of the parts is greater than the whole. In a word, synergy. Even if a competitor succeeded in hiring away key talent, for example, the competitor would still lack the tradition, culture, and complementary assets that make up Disney. Synergy Disney has mastered the art of the cross-sell. It has done so by leveraging its characters and carefully controlling its image, driving toward a unified, highly valued customer experience. An example best illustrates this. Consider a typical multi-day family trip to Disney World. A family books lodging months in advance at a hotel inside the park. It does so because it knows that the hotel has the best location, is highly demanded, and will provide good hospitality. Being lodged inside the park, the family eats at Disney-owned restaurants and perhaps buys Disney merchandise. All the while the family willing

The Walt Disney Company is known throughout the world as a leader in entertainment. The strategies that the Walt Disney Company have used include competitive advantage, a growth strategy, and a renewal strategy. When a person mentions a theme park, Disney is the first park that comes to mind. They were not the first theme park, but they have mastered the art of creating memories for adults and children alike. As a former employee of Disney I can vouch for the amount of effort that goes into

The Walt Disney is a world leading company for the entertainment of all especially families; it is also a media enterprise with different business segments. The main five business segments are studio entertainment, parks and resorts, media networks, consumer products and interactive media. Walt Disney’s original main competence was only animated movies and cartoons. By combining Imagineering with engineering Disney’s company reached supreme success with the formation of the first full length animated movie. This success led to new dreams and ideas, one of them was to open a park, a different kind of park. In Disneyland Walt used new technology to bring his characters to life. He called them “Animatronics”. (Magical Kingdoms, July 2008). With inimitable storytelling and high excellence of service Walt Disney created a magical setting for his guests which none of the competitors could quite duplicate. This then became as said Walt Disney’s core competency. The park has a lot of good reasons behind it’s everlasting success one of them reason being that they have such a good team working behind closed doors to name at least two there’s the human resources team and technology team. The human resources team at Walt Disney partner with different business to develop different strategies specific to each segment. They are also there providing innovative business solutions all over the world in the work environment all of this to promote nothing but success. Working with

The Brand of Disney is our major distinctive competency. With our assortment of characters, primarily our star Mickey Mouse, we are known worldwide through various sources which provides us a competitive advantage. Disney theme parks are reinforced by Disney TV programs, merchandise and movies. The company has unique ability to consistently produce entertainment in various mediums while keeping cost fairly low.

The Walt Disney Company Parks and Resorts strive to be the leader in innovative and creative family entertainment in the world. The mission of The Walt Disney Company Parks and Resorts is to provide “magical” experiences to all guests that visit our Parks and Resorts. We use technology, innovation, and imagination to create a unique entertainment experience comparable to nothing else.

According to Gulati, Huffman, and Neilson (2002), Starbucks proves relationships is an important asset for growth. Starbucks is a relationship-centric organization which relationship is act as a core asset of the firm. This asset is called “relational capital”, which indicates the value of a firm’s network of relationship with stakeholders such as customers, suppliers, alliance partners, and employees. Alliances Starbucks had made with its partners are one of the main cause Starbucks has become well-known brand and coffee leading company in the world.

Exhibit 8 shows customer retention information. We can find from this data, that established customers and new customers are quite different in respect of education, income and attitudes toward Starbucks. According to the exhibit, customers who first visited Starbucks five years ago have higher degree of education and higher income level. Beside that, new Starbucks customers do not see it as a brand of high value, while established customers believe Starbucks to be brand they trust (50%), offering high quality product (51%). Next exhibit suggests, who customers visiting Starbucks stores often, are more satisfied, than customers who buy coffee from the company average four visits per month.

Starbuck has entered into these other categories through partnerships and joint ventures. These relationships make sense, because every partnership is with a company in an industry related to Starbuck’s industry (e.g. Pepsi, Kraft, Unilever, Green Mountain etc.). Starbucks does not enter into partnerships with only one company; but collaborates with many companies, that are the respective leaders in their industry. The coffee company uses many of their partners as guides to learn from, and build relationships in a particular industry. Strategically this makes sense because Starbucks is gaining knowledge and not spending a major amount of money. Therefore, when the