Applying Porter’s Five Forces to Analyze Disney Company Strategy

This case study provides a Porter’s Five Forces analysis of The Walt Disney Company, evaluating the competitive forces within its diverse market segments. It identifies key competitors such as Viacom, Twenty-First Century Fox, CBS, Comcast, and Time Warner. The analysis covers competitive rivalry, bargaining power of buyers and suppliers, the threat of substitutes, and the threat of new entrants. The study also applies Ansoff’s framework to represent Disney's future growth strategies, including market penetration and diversification. It references various sources to support its findings on Disney's strategic management and marketing approaches. This assignment is available on Desklib, a platform offering a wide range of study resources for students.

Porter’s Five Forces Analysis of
the Walt Disney Company

Applying Porter’s five forces model and evaluating the
competitive forces of a given market sector for the organisation
• The Walt Disney Company has a wide
range of market segments.
• For the conglomeration of a number of
main media, Disney company has to
face competition from Viacom Inc
(Viab), Twenty-First Century Fox
(FOXA), CBS (CBS) and Comcast
(CMCSA), Time Warner Inc. (TWX)
(Karadjova-Stoev and Mujtaba, 2016).
• Due to the existence in the various
markets, the company faces
competition from various
marketplaces.

Competitive rivalry or competition
• A huge success of the Disney company let them to be target of the
new marketers such as Viacom Inc (Viab), Twenty-First Century Fox
(FOXA), CBS (CBS) and Comcast (CMCSA), Time Warner Inc. (TWX).
• Disney Company is highly engaged in competition with other
television and cable networks, other media and independent
television stations such as internet and DVD and Blue-ray formats of
video games in terms of retaining the viewers.
• MVPDs is one of the stong market compeitors of Disney Company
(Onkvisit and Shaw, 2017).
• At the present, this company has to be enagaged in market
competition with CBS, Twenty-First century Fox, Comcast’s
NBCUniversal segment Wilson (2017).

Bargaining power of buyers or customers
• It has been seen that most of the consumers of the Disney
Company switch from one transfer to another due to the low
switch costs.
• As stated by Kotler (2015), the viewers of Disney can easily
switch from the movies of Disney to the movies of other
competing firms of Disney.
• Customers’ moderate price sensitivity has a moderate force
on the their marketing strategy of Disney Company.
• Moderate ability to substitute also leaves a moderate force on
the marketing and pricing strategy of Disney company.

Bargaining power of suppliers
• The Walt Disney Company has a large
population of suppliers (Lancaster and
Massingham, 2017).
• Overall high supply does not allow the Disney
Suppliers in affecting the strategic management
of the Disney company.
• Moderate variety of suppliers of Disney leaves
moderate force on the strategic management of
Disney.

Threat of substitutes or substitution
• Moderate availability of substitutes cannot
leave a major impact on the strategic marketing
• In the market there do not also have a large
verity of substitutes of Disney company.
operations of Disney Company.
• Moderate performance to price ratio of Disney
Company is regarded to win moderate
customer satisfaction.

Threat of new entrantes or new entry
• Low switching cost has created a strong force
on the marketing operations of Disney
company.
• High cost of capital does not leave much force
on the strategic management of Disney
Company.
• High cost of brand development has weal force
on the strategic business operations of Disney.

Apply, models, theories and concepts to assist with
the understanding and interpretation of strategic
directions available to an organization

• The diagram represents the future growth of Disney
by using Ansoff’s framework.
• For obtaining market penetration, Disney has already
started to increase and expand its services and
products in the entire retail market.
• Diversification of products is one of the major factor
that is taken under consideration by the business
organization.
• Diversification strategy is suitable because it helps to
provide Disney with various external opportunities,
which in turn will help the business organization to
minimize the threats and face the external challenges.

Reference list
• Karadjova-Stoev, G. and Mujtaba, B.G., 2016. Strategic human resource
management and global expansion lessons from the Euro disney challenges in
France. The International Business & Economics Research Journal
(Online), 15(3), p.79.
• Kotler, P., 2015. Framework for marketing management. Pearson Education
India.
• Lancaster, G. and Massingham, L., 2017. Markets and customers: market
boundaries; target marketing. In Essentials of Marketing Management (pp. 70-
101). Routledge.
• Lillestol, T., Timothy, D.J. and Goodman, R., 2015. Competitive strategies in the
US theme park industry: a popular media perspective. International Journal of
Culture, Tourism and Hospitality Research, 9(3), pp.225-240.
• Onkvisit, S. and Shaw, J.J., 2017. The ‘glocalization’of product and advertising
strategies. Strategic International Marketing: An Advanced Perspective, p.23.
• Wasko, J., 2016. The Walt Disney Company. In Global Media Giants (pp. 25-39).
Routledge.
• Wilson, S., 2017. Personnel Strategy for Multinational Firms: A Case Study of
the Walt Disney Company in China. Asian Political Science Review, 1(1), pp.65-
70.