Factors Contributing to the Poor Performance of EuroDisney and Hong Kong Disney

MANAGEMENT 0
INTERNATIONAL MARKETING

MANAGEMENT 1
1) EuroDisney faced poor performance due to numerous factors within their first year.
One of the significant factors was that U.S. based organisation are unable to identify
the demands and needs of their opposing cultures. U.S. enforced their strategies and
customs on Europeans instead of originally doing research and trying to fulfil the
needs of those people. This makes the event unsuccessful rather than attraction,
related to advertising of “American imperialism” adoring the sustainability and size of
new park. The needs of local attendees were also crushed due to high entry prices,
banning of drinks, developing of complex transportation system and many other
reasons. Some of the external aspects also lead to decline in park attendance such as
economic recession, Golf War, fluctuation in currency, intercontinental airfare wars,
etc.
Considering Hong Kong Disney poor performance, they failed in the first year as of
their ignorance to the cultural aspects and few rides in the park. Moreover, Disney
even did not introduce American characters to the Chinese.
2) Various aspects related to lack of cultural understandings in Europe could have been
controllable. The organisation if fully acknowledge the customer preferences in the
beginning in relation to new services and products, there could be better outcomes.
The firm also does not properly control over the promotional approach as due to lack
of market research. In relation to marketing mix, advertising is a controllable factor
that can have a degree of foreseeability. Considering foreseeability, another aspect
can be related to not selling alcohol at the theme park as in European culture, the
value of glass of wine is very significant.
In Hong Kong, the degree of foreseeability was not seen when building the site. The
organisation also not have appropriate control over the entertainment value and size of
theme park, however, failed to demonstrate this value in the starting.
3) In the story of EuroDisney launch, Ethnocentrism played a big role as the parent
organisation, Disney pays little consideration of the European culture while
introducing the theme park. As they rely on ethnocentrism approach, it leads to failure
in the first year due to U.S. business decision maker and they sensed their way was
better. Considering major success in Tokyo and US, they trust the similar business
approach would work (Toyoda, 2014). Unfortunately, in the starting, it did not.