1. Poor performance during its first year of operation for Euro Disney can be attributed to the fact that they assumed Mickey would be the same hit as he was in Japan. Marketing never planned for the more budget conscious European. They overestimated the number of French visitors who found it cheaper to travel to Disney World in Florida. Also they did not seem to be aware of the French loyalty to their own cartoon characters and total scorn of the American ones. Other contributing factors marketing may have had no way of knowing was the impact of the European recession and the Gulf War. While they had no control of these things, had they known their planning could have taken on a more conservative plan.
Poor performance during its first year of operation for Hong Kong Disney can be attributed to a narrow focus in planning. While using feng shui in designing the park they did not plan for the visitor??™s expectations of bigger and more grandiose, or for their unfamiliarity of the Disney characters. Just because the characters and the themes where they were created and introduced are well known in the U.S. they never thought that they were more or less strangers to the Hong Kong population.
2. As I stated above most of these factors should have been foreseeable except those of economic impacts and world events.
3. Ethnocentrism played a big part in the EuroDisney??™s launch along with the factors contributing to poor performance. Disney successfully launched two theme parks in the United States. They were on two difference coastlines and both of there were very successful. This contributed to a false sense of comfort in planning to launch outside of the United States and caused them to overlook the customs and behaviors of the folks in these countries.
4. Disney??™s cross-cultural marketing skills have room for improvement. They need to isolate the SRC. While this shows the 3rd step in the framework for analysis it seems to have been overlooked all together. Understanding the culture of the foreign market as well as the domestic one and defining them should have revealed some things that could have been planned better to avoid this poor performance.
5. Success in Tokyo predisposed Disney management to be too optimistic in their expectations of success in France and China because it was pulled off almost as easily as it was in the home country. There were more real similarities in Tokyo that did not exist in France and China and Disney management got blind sighted.
6. The experience in France did not help Disney avoid of the problems in Hong Kong because these two cultures are as different to each other as they are to the American culture. Demographic planning in choosing Tokyo was successful, yet using the same strategy in France was not. This was because the expectation of the other Europeans was that they would travel to this location, when in fact this was not the case. They may have traveled the distance but were not willing to pay the premium prices required once arriving.
7. The Shanghai development should benefit greatly from the Hong Kong experience because they are both in China. Same government and similar cultures. Also it seems that Shanghai has been anxiously awaiting the opening of this theme park. It can be compared to opening Disney World after the long standing Disneyland in America.
8. Three locations to focus on for future expansion would be Australia, India and Spain. Spain would probably be the easiest of the three. With the promise of job opportunities and increased tourism Spain should also be a willing participant. In the past Spain participate in an Expo that started to bring them out of the dark ages and I would think that is would be viewed in a similar manner. Disney is already doing business in Europe and the population in Spain is more like other European countries than France which should make the expansion more like Hong Kong and Shanghai.
9. As stated in #8 the operational implications of the history of EuroDisney on the new location in Spain would likely me more similar than different. Comparing the differing strategies of Hong Kong and Shangai will be useful in marketing to the Spanish populatioin.
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