Individual Assignment Week 4

What are Disney's advantages relative to other Theme Parks?

Disney has advantages relative to other theme parks because of its popular and familiar brand

and famous characters among public. As a famous chain of theme parks, Disney offers a low cost

and enjoyable experience to millions of its customers. Disney believes that it is possible to earn

profit and achieve competitive advantage over its competitors by incurring lowest costs and

offering the “product” at a lower price than everyone else, as well as invent more and better

products than others and survive in difficult situations by cutting the prices. The main

competitive advantage of Disney is the relatively lowest cost that incurs per guest as compare to

other theme park brands.

Low ticket price is an advantage for Disney in the areas where other theme parks keep the ticket

prices high. Local visitors with lower incomes find it beneficial to visit Disney theme park

because of its low price tickets when other theme parks are selling tickets at a higher rate.

High quality services and remarkable experiences provided to its customers is another advantage

for Disney theme park. More than half of the customers who visit Disney for the first time come

back to the theme park again, not because of the amusing costumes and enjoyable rollercoasters

but because of the great customer service. Offering a unique performance culture, putting efforts

to knowing what customers want, calling them “guests” instead of customer and seeking ways to

find out how to provide better customer services make Disney unique for its quality services and

exceptional amusement. It not only keeps the existing customers in a strong relationship with

Disney but also attracts new customers.

Which strategic and operational challenges does Disney face as it grows in the global

market?

During its expansion, instead of focusing on how its competitors were offering the amusement

services at low prices Disney focused on maintaining the quality of their services. This caused

Disney to lose youth customers. Companies in the market that were in a strong competition with

Disney gave this brand a tough competition to offer entertainment services to people. Although

Disney always took care of customers choices and preferences but they faced challenges of

customer’s changed tastes with time. The company focused on being customer’s first choice and

managed to provide the content that customers may feel interesting for. Walt Disney faced

criticism and received various motivational responses from its customers. Disney took this

criticism as a positive feedback and focused on maintaining the high quality service by focusing

on how to make existing customers happy and how to attract new customers. Other competitors

were offering their services at a low rate and were providing unique and different kind of

entertainment services to their customers. In order to bring positive changes and sustain their

position in market, Disney focused on customer’s choices, tastes and preferences.

For the launch of the Shanghai Park, what are the specific challenges the company faces

and how would you try to overcome those?

For the launch of Shanghai Park, Disney faced a tough competition from its competitors because

there were more than 60 theme park companies who were already being built or planning to

build. Because of being a famous place, commercial capital and “showpiece” of China, Shanghai

got the attraction of Disney.

When Disney planned to start the theme park project in Shanghai, it faced political, legal,

economic, social and cultural challenges. Although the Disney cartoon was popular with

Shanghai residents but the idea of theme park took ten years to launch. Shanghai Government

was attracted towards Disney but in 1999, Disney chose to launch a theme park in Hong Kong

instead of China. Negotiations for Disney theme park in Shanghai got fail in 2002 too. In 2009,

the project was approved between Shanghai Government and Walt Disney Company to be

launched in 2015.

It was difficult for Disney to seek ways to fascinate and appeal Chinese tourists. Chinese tourists

were familiar with Disney but lacked attraction to it so Disney focused to find ways to make

them understand “Disney”. For example, Disney created a “one day trip guide” program in

Chinese language which makes Chinese people more attracted and familiar with the brand.

Disney hired Chinese staff at Shanghai theme park and offered Chinese cuisine so that people

may feel attracted and amused. They tried to create a Chinese culture and environment at

Shanghai theme park.