Walt Disney is the world leader in family entertainment and one of the most valuable brands in the world. Recently, Walt Disney has decided to open up a Disney Theme Park in Hong Kong China, which will be the first theme park in China. Since the opening of Euro Disney, the Walt Disney Company has learned to take into consideration important determinants so that their investment will not be a huge financial loss. Unfortunately, Since Disney did not research as much as they should of when deciding to open Euro Disney, this lead to one of the biggest failures for the Disney Company and is today used as an example of international marketing failures.
Disney had high expectations about opening up a Disney Theme Park in France. They projected 500,000 visitors to be in the park on opening day and the result was only 20,000 visitors. According to the textbook, international corporations should research and analyze their profitability level and the market size. Many international companies need to expense their research and development because it will only lead to big financial losses. Walt Disney Company should of used a transnational approach to achieve a consistent and controlled marketing strategy. Transnational approach has three types of variables such as demographic, psychographic and behavioral. A big problem that Disney overlooked was the lack of marketing to the French people, there were more visitors from outside of France then there was in France. After realizing their turnover they starting promoting special package prices for French residents.
Several fundamental points that affected the failure of Euro Disney's first 2 years were location, staffing, dining, prices and the opening of to many hotel rooms at once.
Location was very important reason on Walt Disney's failures, which includes the climate, continental consumer traffic, proximity to other tourist's attractions, and regional consumer traffic. Walt Disney assumed that there would not be any problems with any of these critical factors because they had no problem in the United States or in Tokyo Disney. The climate in Paris is rainy but it is continual rain that will fall steadily for up to 12 to 17 hours. Orlando has occasional drenching down pours and California weather at the park is dry, warm and sunny. Also the proximity to other tourist attractions were considered but in the summer most tourists are drawn to go on the coast of the Mediterranean whereas the Orlando and California parks have always drawn tourists and they are always adding new attractions to both parks. The regional consumer traffic was another determinant. Paris is nearby which is a plus because of high population densities but north south and east of the park the densities are quite low. Walt Disney's plans were based on the theme parks in the United States and they should have looked into it more instead of having an attitude of "We know best" because it actually lead them to bigger...