Friday, March 4, 2011
EuroDisney Case Study
Case One: EuroDisney
1. What factors contributed to EuroDisney’s poor performance during its first year of operations?
Even though Disney has a theme song that says “It’s a small world after all”, the world remains quite diverse. The biggest factors that contributed to the poor performance during the first year of EuroDisney’s operations were: a poor understanding of the marketplace, the issues and the cultural differences between two nations and two differing approaches to business and life. The major factor was ethnocentrism of the American leaders counterbalanced by French national insecurities. I have to suggest that the powerful and perhaps arrogant leadership style of Michael Eisner contributed to the problems. Even so, the problems were wider than that. Assuming that people would come from all over Europe as part of the business plan but failing to comprehend how diverse those consumers would be was another major part of the problem. Even though Europe has recently united as the European Union, they have been strongly distinct and independent cultures for centuries.
Disney failed to understand the French national character, their insecurities over cultural invasion after having been an occupied nation twice in the last century and their deep commitment to maintaining their identity and liberty. The arrogance of the French is based on insecurity as a global minority and the arrogance of the Americans was based on a wide open optimism and global success. The collision of the two ‘arrogancies’ was “formidable” as the French say.
2. To what degree do you consider that these factors were a) foreseeable, b) controllable by either EuroDisney or the parent company Disney?
A study in history and an understanding of the characters of Europe and the European market place would have enabled the Disney executives to anticipate many of the problems. Some problems were controllable and others were inevitable. Those that were inevitable, however, needed an approach that would soften the reaction rather than exacerbate it. It was inevitable that the choice of France as the location would ruffle French feathers. Their history of occupation shaped their reaction. Their coolness to all things anglophile is legendary. If we simply consider an individual personality, it would be easily understandable that a proud woman who had been enslaved and brutalized might have some lingering issues with dominant behaviour and may especially have trouble looking into the eyes of her rescuers who had seen her at her worst.
Even so, they chose France perhaps for its cache in the American psyche (more ethnocentricity). The dominance of the American executive insisting on only English being spoken was like pouring gas on the situation in a culture that monitors words which are absorbed from other languages by an official government body. The idea of pushing business according to an American ethos was an affront to the French who take their liberty and unionization very seriously. Coming from the union free Southern United States, the clash was profound. These were all quite predicable for anyone who cared to see beyond their own ways.
3. What role does ethnocentrism play in the story of EuroDisney’s launch?
The truth is embodied in this seemingly ambiguous statement “you don’t know what you do not know”. The trap is that when you do not understand or know something there is no little red light that says “you don’t get it”. In fact, there is no perception at all that there is something missing. Ethnocentricity carries us deeply into this trap and Disney fell head long into it. They certainly had the resources to get marketing opinion from European sources that would have saved them millions in mistakes. I think though, that the powerful personality of Eisner, coming off of several victories where he forced his vision through the objections of the American business community to win big and be therefore
Related Documents: Euro: The Walt Disney Company and Disney Essays
Lisa Green Euro Disney After the success of Tokyo Disneyland, Disney decided to place a theme park in Europe. Two locations became targets, Barcelona and Paris. After much deliberation and governmental cooperation, Paris was chosen. However, Disney was bounded by the Republic of French to make sure Euro Disneyland was a French corporation and that it’s developed into a major international theme park that can create 30,000 jobs. The reasons for Disney choosing, as far as finance and market share…
Marketing Project- Part 1 Walt Disney Company· The Walt Disney Company is one of the world’s largest media and Entertainment Companies with assets that would include media networks, studio entertainment, parks and resorts, and consumer products.Disneys main competitors within the entertainment industry would include Viacom Inc, Time Warner Inc. Twenty-First Century Fox, CBS and Comcast. (Nielson, 2014) The company’s theme parks and resorts, as well as Disney Cruise Line and Disney Vacation Club, compete…
Case study The Walt Disney Company: The Entertainment King 1.Briefly describe the type(s) of diversification strategies that Walt Disney pursues/has pursued over the years. The Walt Disney company can be seen as a highly diversified company. Over the years, it has pursued a wide range of diversification strategies that we can enhance:Horizontal integration: obviously, Walt Disney has invaded several markets, diversifying its offer to many fields. In 2000, we can find five big main fields of…
Disney Case Write up: Disney from the start has had a competitive advantage to others in the film industry for the plain fact as Walt says, “Cartoons unlike actors can be perfectly controlled to avoid any negative imagery.” This statement is the key stone to how Disney has so successfully created value. Disney has pursued its corporate level strategy by maintaining the value of the brand, managing creativity, and encouraging synergy throughout the corporation. Managing the Disney brand has…
The Walt Disney Company is one of the largest media and entertainment corporations in the world. Disney is able to create sustainable profits due to its heterogeneity, inimitability, co-specialization and immense foresight. During the late twentieth century, Michael Eisner founded and gave a rebirth to Walt Disney Company. Eisner revitalize TV and movies, Themes Park and new businesses. Eisner's takeover for fifteen years had climbed the revenues and net earnings of the company. It also successfully…
Walt Disney Corporation Marketing Audit Max McKay Sabrina Coady Henrik Oiseth Principles of Marketing 308 Professor Simpson November 14, 2006 Walt Disney Corporation Founded in 1923, the Walt Disney Company has predicated itself as the world’s best in the family entertainment business. After 80 years in the business, who could argue with that statement? Today, Walt Disney Corporation dominates the market of family entertainment. An unparalleled experience is the direct affect…
Technology, Australia. Abstract When companies internationalize, the dimension of individual national cultures needs to be considered in conjunction with corporate culture. Theme parks deliberately set out to portray the cultures and fantasies of other times and places, thereby compounding the issues affecting corporate and national cultures. Explores the tensions that the corporate culture of Walt Disney Corporation imposes on its French subsidiary, Euro Disney SCA, to determine if the resultant…
non-accelerated filer. See definition of “accelerated filer and large accelerated filer” in Rule 12b-2 of the Exchange Act. Large accelerated filer 9 Accelerated filer Non accelerated filer Indicate by check mark whether the registrant is a shell company (as defined in Rule 12b-2 of the Act). YES NO 9 The aggregate market value of common stock held by non-affiliates (based on the closing price on the last business day of the registrant’s most recently completed second fiscal quarter as reported…
Paper 5- Euro Disney Abstract Disneyland is the park for children who want to make their dream come true. In Paris, Disney also have a park to serve people here. This is the venturing project of Disneyland in France. For a course of time, Euro Disneyland experience a huge net loss. In this paper, we are going to discuss the difference of cultures between two countries as a major problem, and discover what makes Disney be not successful in this country.…
Apple The American multinational corporation apple was first established in Cupertino, California on April 1, 1976 as a computer company. Although in the last decade, the company has expanded greatly, and now specialises in more than just computers. In 2001 apple became the dominant market leader in music players, coming out with the ipod. The company then joined the phone market in 2007 with the iPhone which was also hugely successful. Apple software includes the Mac OS X operating system, the…