International Strategic Marketing: the Walt Disney Parks - Research Proposal Example

The World Disney Parks and Resorts: A Strategic Audit The Company The Walt Disney Parks and Resorts is aconstituent of The Walt Disney Company, one of the principal entertainment and media multinationals. It is only second to the AOL Time Warner. The mother company runs operations in four important businesses constituting Studio Entertainment, Media Networks, Consumer Products, as well as Parks and Resorts that are the core features in this discourse. The company runs the most popular parks and resorts in the world led by the Walt Disney World resort in Florida. The resort in Florida is the number one park in the United States with more than fifteen and a half million visitors annually. Other parks include the Disney Cruise line running business in Florida out of Port Canaveral as well as two hotels in addition to the Disneyland Park in California. The constituent generates management fees and royalties on revenues from Tokyo in Tokyo Disneyland as well as in France from Disneyland Paris. The former receives more than sixteen and a half million people every year. The Walt Disney Company also runs media networks with two subcategories namely; Cable Networks and Broadcasting. Among the broadcasting units the company owns and runs the ABC Television Network that ranks that behind CBS and NBC networks. Listed under the cable networks are Disney Channel., ESPN-branded cable networks, and Disney Channel International in addition to shaving major shares in Lifetime and E-Entertainment as well as start-up cable operations among them SoapNet and Too Disney. The mother company also has various consumer products on the market. In this case, Walt Disney Company provides licences for it characters to consumer manufacturers, publishers, and retailers across the globe. Through Disney Stores, the company takes in direct retail business where it produces magazines and books in Europe and in the entire United States. The company also produces other products associated with entertainment including film, computer software, audio software, and video besides those applied in the educational market. Owning the studio entertainment category enables the company to generate a broad range of television animation programs, movies, live stage plays some used in schools, as well as musical recordings. All these products come on the foothill of television distribution, home video, and theoretical Disney film. It creates a television library. The library entails much more apart from Touchstone, Walt Disney pictures, Miramax, and Buena. The value of Strategic management Scholars posit that strategic management is a function of management that constitutes three different actions. The actions include formulation, implementation, and assessment of multi-functional decisions putting the organization in a position of achieving set targets. All companies among them Walt Disney Resorts and Parks require strategic management to prosper in the modern contemporary business environment. Today, globalization stands at the all-time high making strategic management one of the priorities of the top executives of prosperous companies. To the management of The Walt Disney Resorts and Parks, strategic management remains a necessity. The management recognizes and embraces the fact that communication is an essential aspect of strategic management that results in its success. The management also believes in empowering employees because it adds great value to strategic management. Therefore, The Walt Disney Resorts and Parks implements strategic management at a wide-level of the company. It is a successful, professional, and polished company that carries out strategic management planning. The company attains a competitive advantage against its competitors in the industry because of its rivals do not perform strategic planning during their trading periods. The Walt Disney Company running the Walt Disney Resorts and Parks continues to expand with Walt Disney World currently scheduling plans to open a resort, a park, and a hotel in Malaysia. The fact is not associated with position that over the last two years company profits have stagnated. It is significant to mention that the revenue for the company continues to increase every year irrespective of the profits remaining stagnant. The company’s reason for existence clearly defines the focus of the management. The mission statement covers goals, philosophies, morals, and ambitions. Along with the statement of purpose, the company is on track to remain the leading producer and provider of information and entertainment in the world. The company proceeds with developing the most innovative, creative, as well as profitable entertainment and associated products through the differentiated services, content, and consumer products. The Walt Disney Resorts and Parks uses established strategies to attain set objectives. The management in the company comprehends that having a set goal does not assure the company that each path to the chosen destination remains a good one. First, the company has strategically set goals and then generates essential strategically sound strategies helping in offering the means of transportation for the set objectives. The path followed by Walt Disney Resorts and Parks influences the performances of all the branches across the globe. Formulation and implementation of strategies takes place at the central point, which is the company headquarters. The order to implement the strategies from the headquarters to all the branches takes place only after critical evaluation of external and internal factors influencing the performance of the business in the respective market environments. The management considers such a situation safe for company operations. Strategic Internal Audit Strengths In most cases, many companies have specific abilities that they perform in a better way compared to rivals in the industry. At the same time, they have great history used as a foundation for primary development and building success. The features constitute the strengths of an organization and entail positive aspects of the collective assortment of the company that made the company better in various ways in the past. a. A diverse and vast portfolio Before moving to Hollywood, Disney brothers who started the company had practised drawing cartoons. The pioneers grew up in Missouri taking their childhood and teenage life imagining characters they could introduce to the world and entertain people. Therefore, Resorts and Parks remained part of their dreams since their childhood. The company spreads its resorts and parks across the world with major ones in Florida, California, and Tokyo among many more. The single biggest portfolio for Walt Disney Resorts and Parks remains its biggest strength of the whole company. b. Diversification The company moved away from the original products it put on the market. As identified earlier, the plans are underway to open more resorts and parks as well as hotels in Malaysia to add to those already doing well in other markets across the globe. Important in this section is a fact that the mother company The Walt Disney Company also runs divergent operations. The company for instance, stopped its traditional label of specialising in the typical animation studio labelled across the world as a film production firm. The greatest step towards change took place in nineteen fifty-one when the company changed from a typical first theme park in California to the entertainment-oriented company. The shift from the media-leaning company to the wide category remained dramatic at the time. Through this opportunity, the company found it necessary to send to the market its consumer products such as hot dogs and rollercoaster’s. Starting in California, the company found the consumer market unique and the best opportunity for the management to intertwine the institutions impressive portfolio of film production with parks and attractive resorts. The company followed this path in establishing parks and resorts in all the major markets in the world among them Tokyo, California, and Florida. c. Irresistible Customer Service The Walt Disney resorts and parks thrive in many issues that bring pride. Most people would mention the castle and Mickey Mouse as things that the company is renowned for across the globe. However, from the business perspective, the story is different where business professionals would identify customer service. The management of company parks and resorts demands utmost customer service from employees. People with experience of visiting the parks and resorts will always urge their friends and other people to get the opportunity to experience the Disney Difference. The trend is common across the globe. The degree with which the employees deliver customer service leaves nostalgic moments in the future of the clients. A proof comes from the many books and journals talking about the good side of the resorts and parks from those who gotten the opportunity to experience the Disney Difference. The best of them is from the holy grail of client satisfaction. Weaknesses Internal weaknesses rise on the fact that all companies have their strengths where they outshine their competitors. They have abilities that help them work towards achieving set goals. Similarly, the companies have weaknesses exploited by their opponents or those that make them fail to successfully attain their set objectives. The Walt Disney Resorts and Parks have attributes and features that inhibit ultimate success. Negative aspects that derail the systematic success of Walt Disney Resorts and Parks make up the weaknesses of the company. I. The persistent need of successful entertaining materials The hotel industry continues to attract more investors and this increases competition of Walt Disney Resorts and Parks. As much as most analysts would be quick to conclude that the company gets it on the spot when it comes to generating new ideas, weaknesses that come along this factor are of consequence. Most importantly, the company needs to maintain constant flow of ideas. However, the practicality of such situations is not always the case. The company will always experience both high and low moments following each other in a serial manner. It is good to appreciate the fact the Walt Disney Resorts and Parks remains the world’s greatest producer of ideas that remain successful, the need to constantly deliver the same is a challenge. The company prides in perfection and their services in parks and resorts and anything sinister in the delivery of their services sends shivers in the chins of all employees including the top management. II. Ever-increasing cost of running activities One unfortunate fact about Walt Disney Resorts and Parks is that it runs business in an industry with astronomical expenses and costs. It is expensive to maintain resorts and parks apart from supply fresh food to clients visiting hotels. With recent stagnation in profits as much as revenues continue to increase, the realization by the company of the increasing costs of running operations became ordinary. However, it is necessary for analysts not to confuse high barriers for entry into the industry with the company weaknesses. The former acts as an opportunity and at the same time an external factor. III. Limited Developmental property Assessment of the Walt Disney Resorts and Parks over the past thirty years remains remarkable. The company established the first international park in Tokyo thirty-one years ago in the twentieth century. Other international parks in Hong Kong and Paris came almost immediately after the Tokyo branch opened its doors to clients. The long-term plans for the company are to apportion other sections of the resort in Florida to parks. On other fronts however, the company has little space for expansion. Strategic External Audit Opportunities The management at the Walt Disney Resorts and Parks avers that they have a responsibility of using company strengths to tackle and minimize the weaknesses. Both strengths and weaknesses are controllable aspects of the company. External audit deals with controllable and focused factors outside the company ability. Opportunities constitute a component of external features to the company. The features offer the company an opportunity to make positive steps as they seek to cut down on the weaknesses. Increasing the influence in the entertainment industry The Walt Disney Company, the mother company to the Walt Disney Resorts and Parks can incorporate aspects of its entertainment industry such as music into the parks and resorts. The intentional market in this case would be clients aged between ten and eighteen still very enthusiastic about music. Expansion into new markets Untapped markets by the company still exist among them Malaysia and South Africa among others. Stepping into new markets offers a good opportunity for the company to cover its weaknesses considering the fact developmental property remains limited. Currently, the company has parks and resorts in California, Florida, Hong Kong, Tokyo, and Paris as well a Shanghai (David, 2010, p. 56). The businesses branches remain located in regions with dense populations. The management should consider locating new parks and resorts way from areas with high populations. The company should take the initiative of investing in all major tourist attraction destinations include the Arab world. Other highlighted areas for consideration are Jamaica and Hawaii that do not stagger by any means. Conclusion The strategic analysis of the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats is a significant matching tool for strategic management that provides analysts with the best way to carry out both internal and external audit of the company. Affected areas include the factors applicable during the development of success strategy. The Walt Disney Resorts and Parks utilises positive internal and external factors to respond to weaknesses. Overall, the company also has various consumer products on the market. In this case, Walt Disney Company provides licences for it characters to consumer manufacturers, publishers, and retailers across the globe. Through Disney Stores, the company takes in direct retail business where it produces magazines and books in Europe and in the entire United States. Bibliography David Faunal, 2010, Strategic management: concepts and cases. Boston: Prentice Hall. Read More