Choose a Destintion - Walt Disney Company

Introduction

The Walt Disney Company is a diversified, world-renowned entertainment and media corporation which creates value to maximum its profit via five market segments: Media Networks, Parks and Resorts, Walt Disney Studios, Disney Consumer Products as well as Disney Interactive. More specifically, each segment brings different amount of profit to the company, which is 46% (18,714 million dollars), 29% (11,797 million dollars), 16% (6,351 million dollars), 7% (3,049 million dollars) and 2% (982 million dollars), respectively (Carillo et al, 2012). As the figure shows, Parks and Resorts play the second significant role in its total revenue. Heretofore, there are five Disneyland around the world: Disneyland in Anaheim (1955), Disney World in Orlando (1971), Tokyo Disneyland (1983), Euro Disneyland (1992) and Hong Kong Disneyland (2005). It is interesting to note that although both Tokyo Disneyland and Euro Disneyland are the first two Disney theme parks which were opened outside the United States, the profitability of these two parks are quite different. According to Spencer (1995), Tokyo Disneyland earned approximately 200 million dollars between 1983 and 1992. However, in comparison with Tokyo Disneyland, Euro Disneyland had lost around 1 billion dollars during the first eighteen months since it opened.

Thus, this paper will mainly use the theories to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of approach which The Walt Disney Company has applied to the Euro Disneyland. Moreover, after the evaluation of approach, some suggestions about what the company need to do to ensure the success with its Paris operations will be also given in the paper.

Strengths

The operation of the Euro Disneyland brought a significant amount of loss to The Walt Disney Company since it opened. According to Newell (2007), the Euro Disneyland had already lost approximately 51.7 million euro during the first six months of operation. In addition, after one year of operation, Euro Disneyland even asked The Walt Disney Company for financial support as it ran out of money. However, although Euro Disneyland had a poor performance, it still arms with some strengths.

Firstly, there is no doubt that Disney has a globalized brand, which provides Disney with competitive advantages to enter the international market. A brand is ‘ a name, term, sign, symbol, or deign, or a combination of them, intended to identify the goods or services of one seller or group of sellers and to differentiate them from those competitors’ (Kotler and Keller, 2006). Branding plays a significant role in the expansion of organizations, especially for multinational corporations (MNCs), like The Walt Disney Company. A strong brand enables enterprises to attain the popularity in another country before they actually do any physical activities as people have already had awareness of this company.