...This Disney Company: Corporate Business Strategies Analysis Jessica Hennessey and Jamie Gregar Viterbo University This Disney Company: Corporate Business Strategies Analysis Introduction/Background The Disney Company is an international family entertainment and media enterprise with five business segments: media networks, parks and resorts, studio entertainment, consumer products and interactive media (The Disney Company, n.d.). The Walt Disney Company, as known today, originated in 1923 with the creation of Disney Brothers Studio, founded by Walter and Roy Disney. The studio began creating animated films that would become the foundation of Disney (The Disney Company, n.d.). The Company expanded into its first theme park, Disneyland in Anaheim, CA, in 1955 and another in Orlando, FL, Disney World in 1971. In 1983 the company continued its market expansion with the launch of the Disney Channel and also internationally with both Tokyo Disney and Euro Disney (The Disney Company, n.d.). Continued company growth and market development occurred with Disney’s acquisition of the Miramax Film Company in 1993. Further market capture occurred with the purchase Capital Cities ABC in 1995; this allowed for Disney to have access to the cable networks of ABC and ESPN (Business Wire, 1995). Pixar was the next addition to the Disney empire with a 7.4 billion dollar purchase in 2006 followed by Marvel Entertainment in 2009 at 4 billion dollars and most recently Lucas Films in 2012...
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...Introduction This essay shall discuss what the Disney difference is and how it affects the company’s corporate, competitive and functional strategies. As Disney have plans on doing business in Russia, the discussion turns to the challenges they are likely to face and how the management team can best prepare themselves for such challenges by planning early. We will then be turning our attention to Hong Kong where Disney has announced its expansions plans of Hong Kong Disney Land. Lastly, the discussion takes to the how strategic management process is to be used to “keep the magic coming” in a given economic climate. 1a: Disney Difference Disney difference, to sum up, is the “experience”. Disney tries to achieve this experience by bringing happiness to its consumers. Vice President & General Manager of Disney Institute, Jeff James (2012) stated, "We create happiness by providing the finest in entertainment for people of all ages, everywhere." Disney implementation of this happiness factor can be seen in many ways. For example, Cinderella Castle, in Disney Theme Park allows the visitors to dine with Disney Princesses, immersing a storybook setting for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Thus instead of just having to watch/read the cartoon/story book, which could only allow one to be only exposed visually to the character, Cinderella, the Disney fan is now able to dine with her as well. This “imagination-comes-to-life” offering of Disney translates into happiness for the customers,...
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...sure it runs 24 hours a day Lots of projects with good operating history; but DEBT FUNDERS ARE NOT SURE! Key Biomass Risks Three Key Risks: Fuel Fuel Fuel Other Risks Legislation Construction/Technology Risk Offtake provisions Operating Risks Fuel Key Risks Scale of the Plant - Is there enough? What will the price be in the long term? How do you get it to the plant at all times? Counter Party Risks? Is there enough? Brigg Sleaford Snetterton What will the price be in the long term? In depth knowledge of the market Needs third party confirmation Long term fuel contracts Ability to utilise back up fuels How do you get it to the plant? Need to fully explain the fuel logistics strategy A track record of managing fuel for a UK biomass plant Appropriate contingency planning No substitute for having done it before Counter Party Risk Wide range of fuels with wide range of suppliers Some large scale suppliers in the market Strength of counter part vs number of contracts Legislation Grandfathering Biomass Cap End of...
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...What is Walt Disney Company’s corporate strategy?2.What is your assessment of the long-termattractiveness of the industries represented in WaltDisney Company’s business portfolio?3.What is your assessment of the competitivestrength of Walt Disney Company’s differentbusiness units?4.What does a 9-cell industry attractiveness/businessstrength matrix displaying Walt Disney Company’s business units look like? 4 What is Walt Disney Company’s corporate strategy?2.What is your assessment of the long-termattractiveness of the industries represented in WaltDisney Company’s business portfolio?3.What is your assessment of the competitivestrength of Walt Disney Company’s differentbusiness units?4.What does a 9-cell industry attractiveness/businessstrength matrix displaying Walt Disney Company’s business units look like? 4 What is Walt Disney Company’s corporate strategy?2.What is your assessment of the long-termattractiveness of the industries represented in WaltDisney Company’s business portfolio?3.What is your assessment of the competitivestrength of Walt Disney Company’s differentbusiness units?4.What does a 9-cell industry attractiveness/businessstrength matrix displaying Walt Disney Company’s business units look like? 4 What is Walt Disney Company’s corporate strategy?2.What is your assessment of the long-termattractiveness of the industries represented in WaltDisney Company’s business portfolio?3.What is your assessment of the competitivestrength...
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...1. Why has Disney been successful for so long? (reference to Industry Analysis, Disney's chosen strategy, Disney's sources of Competitive Advantage and comment on sustainability of advantage) Disney has remained successful for myriad reasons, not the least of those is its ability to constantly realign its strategy to the trends of the market. Disney is a company that survives by continually realizing the depth of a new idea. The company harvests every available profit from its ventures before acquiring and moving to newer and more forward thinking endeavors. It uses its strength of foresight to predict up and coming industry trends and its incredible scale and wealth of resources to dominate the market. Fundamental understanding of corporate strategy has allowed Disney to vertically integrate during its early days in the film business through the creation of its own distribution network. This forward integration move proved to be an important facet in the success of the Disney strategy, as it allowed them to save at least one-third of the gross revenue for each film. In addition, Disney seemed to have a complete understanding of what it means to have corporate synergy. The company utilized its corporate strategy to successfully diversify, creating a set of complementing and cross-promoting business units that leveraged the already strong Disney brand to maximize shareholder value. A strong corporate culture offers support in uniting the effort brought together by the different...
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...I. Why has Disney been successful for so long? Disney’s long-run success is mainly due to creating value through diversification. Their corporate strategies (primarily under CEO Eisner) include three dimensions: horizontal and geographic expansion as well as vertical integration. Disney is a prime example of how to achieve long-run success through the choices of business, the choice of how many activities to undertake, the choice of how many businesses to be in, the choice of how to manage a portfolio of businesses and the choice of how to create synergies between those businesses (3, p.191-221). All these choices and decisions are made through Disney’s corporate strategies and enabled them to reach long-term success. One will discuss Disney’s long-run success through a general approach. Eisner’s turnaround of the company and his specific implications/strategies will be examined in detail in part II. Disney could reach long-run success mainly through the creation of value due to diversification and the management and fostering of creativity, brand image and synergies between businesses (1, p.11-14). The most important part of Disney’s long-term success is due to its key strategic choices and incorporation of various diversification strategies. Disney created value mainly through “vertical integration” of its business lines, especially through the concept of forward integration. For example, Disney integrated production of movies and the final distribution in cinema’s or on television...
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...The Walt Disney Company: The Entertainment King Starting as a young boy from Missouri, farmer Walter Elias Disney set out to make a mark on society. After first joining the Red Cross in World War I, he came back determined to be an artist. After moving to Hollywood in 1923 with his older brother Roy, they founded Disney Brothers Studio. After diversifying as much as possible, Disney had a firm grasp on the global market share until the 1980’s where the company’s revenues began to slump in the film industry. Luckily Sid Bass invested $365 million in order to rescue the company and bring an end to all hostile takeover attempts. Disney’s billion dollar powerhouse status in the entertainment industry can be broken down and analyzed using the McKinsey’s 7S model. This model can be applied to Disney to analyze the company’s management and strategic policies. The McKinsey 7S model covers important strategic areas of operation including, strategy, structure, systems, style, skills, staff, and shared values. These seven elements need to be aligned and mutually reinforcing so that the model can be used to help identify what needs to be realigned in order to improve performance or to maintain alignment and performance. Disney Corporation has a hugely diversified strategy, that is to say, the plan devised to maintain and build competitive advantage over the competition. In 1928, after creating and losing the Oswald franchise to his distributor, Walt used a technique new to the animated...
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...Question #1 – Why has Disney been successful for so long? The primary reason for Disney’s success is their understanding of a corporate strategy. Since its inception, Disney has successfully utilized its corporate strategy to diversify. This has enabled them to look forward into the future, as well as developing complimenting and cross-promoting business products. They are able to look into the future and foresee upcoming market trends. By expanding their line from movies to theme parks and even cruise ships, Disney has successfully diversified its corporate strategy over and over again. Their corporate strategy is also geared to people across a broad demographic. However, it is the genius of marketing toward children that helps to engrain the culture of Disney into young minds. Those youngsters grow older and pass their love of Disney onto their young children and Disney remains strong. Question #2 – Is Disney diversified along geographic and product lines? Disney is definitely diversified along both geographic and product lines. Disney has created value through various diversification strategies, primarily vertical integration and more specifically forward integration. They have diversified over geographic lines when they built hotels around the world, theme parks, not only in California and Florida, but also in Asia and Europe. Their cruise ships travel all around the world as well and they have over 200 retail stores in North America, over 100 in Europe and 50...
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...Walt Disney The central issue in this case is that with the merger of Walt Disney and ABC the success the company has been experiencing for so many years began to downslide and which caused Disney to go through some strategic changes for the company to regain back its status as the Entertainment King. Their success for so many years has been as a result of them venturing into so many business divisions like the Theme parks and also them licensing their products and its name. At the time Disney was formed, the movie industry was a favorable industry for making profit and Disney Productions was formed when Walt Disney realized this the company realized its first movie Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs which was very successful. It just produce any movie, the movies it produced were creative and of good quality. Corporate synergy was also a strategy used to rejuvenate Disney and Disney Dimensions was formed. Like the saying goes, “No man is an island”, we can’t do everything all by ourselves we definitely need people. At the end of this program, employees went back to their regular duties and were able to communicate more between themselves to get things done more efficiently and effectively. Rebuilding the various business divisions of the company by the encouraging not only financial forces but also creative forces i.e. encouraging the employees to be innovative and think of expansive ideas. Hiring Katzenberg who was a good script identifier, a good actor and...
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...Executive Summary The Walt Disney Company was started in 1923 when brothers Walt and Roy Disney joined together to start what would become known as one of the most successful entertainment companies of all time. Through years of carefully calculated risks, taking advantage of opportunities in the market, and diversifying the company Disney has achieved worldwide recognition and market share in the majority of their business segments. Throughout this analysis of The Walt Disney Company, we will review the major decisions and reasons why Disney is so successful. We review the Corporate Level Strategy – which is on the outside a diversified approach, with a breakdown of all business segments, then go further in depth with their major Business Segment, Media Networks. The Media Networks segment is a highly diversified segment that includes domestic and international elements, with both internal productions as well as many subsidiaries that expand their offerings beyond traditional Disney productions. We will analyze Disney with the Porters 5 forces model, as well as a SWOT analysis. Within these two analysis models, we find Disney is well positioned for the current moment as well as the future. Disney is well positioned against new entrants to the industry as well as current rivals. Disney’s history of family friendly, safe, and “magical” entertainment that is neither offensive or vulgar has paid off, with 87% of parents who watched Disney productions as a child introducing...
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...Walt Disney: Investor Communications Strategy Q1. In your opinion, what are the most critical elements of Disney’s overall investor communications strategy? Do you believe Disney is successful in each of these elements? A1. One of the most important elements of Disney’s investor communications strategy was dividing the shareholder base into three different groups, namely: buy side, sell side, and retail investors. This tactic allows a specific approach to different kinds of investors that is tailored accordingly. They are successful in this element of the strategy as they have identified their priority group: Disney considered its most important investor audience to be those shareholders whose investment time horizon matched the company’s long-term operational and financial time horizon. In addition to this, Disney’s management believed it was important that the company maintain credibility with the investment community. This also makes up a very important element that will play a vital role for their corporate strategy, creating something that is high in quality and of enduring content, as this is quality control, shielding the company from future tension with the shareholders. In order to position Disney’s strategy and management team credibly, the company provided specific examples and illustrations around its performance. They have successfully handled a cagey situation with the analysts concerning the Disney amusement park and them thinking it was weighing on the company’s...
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...Disney Case Analysis 3. What sort of company did Eisner inherit? Provide a brief summary of the company at the time Eisner took over (discuss each of its business lines in 1-2 sentences that highlight the most important issues). Eisner inherited a family entertainment company that began as a nonhierarchical organization where no one had titles and everyone was on a first name basis. Walt’s theory was that you didn’t need a title because you knew if you were important. Disney’s philosophy was to create universal timeless family entertainment and believed in the importance of family life maintaining its adherence to the Disney formula for family recreation. The company believed and always aimed to provide an experience that the families would be able to participate in and take joy in together and always with a commitment to excellent in all facets of the business. When Eisner took over the company’s financial performance had deteriorated. Disney was incurring heavy costs trying to complete projects on time i.e. EPCOT center and Euro Disney and the Disney Channel. He viewed “managing creativity” as Disney’s most distinctive corporate skill and pursued with the development of synergy through vertical integration. With this philosophy, Eisner inspired and managed Disney. Disney mushroomed with Eisner’s extreme corporate vision which he targeted at an annual revenue growth target and return on stockholders’...
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...company, or been acquired by another company, evaluate the strategy that led to the merger or acquisition to determine whether or not this merger or acquisition was a wise choice. Justify your opinion. The merger I choose to research was the acquisition of Pixar by Disney. The merger between Disney and Pixar was a very successful one. They worked together in the past and their contract was running out after the release of Cars. This was the perfect opportunity and sensible move for these two companies to merge. The merger would allow the companies to work together conveniently. This merger was very rewarding allowing the company to put out very successful movies such as WALL-E, Up, and Bolt. They both have high expectations including plans for twice-yearly films. This was not possible before the merger. Disney has been able to give Pixar a boost in the field of advertising, marketing plugs, and merchandising. Disney is the best in the business when it comes to marketing to children. Disney spent $ 7.4 billion to acquire Pixar from Apple’s head Steve Jobs (Monica, 2006). The strategy behind this merger is to continue creating innovative stories, characters, and films that pleases viewers worldwide (Monica, 2006). The acquisition improved Disney’s animation which helps stimulates its growth throughout its businesses. This was a very smart strategic deal that will benefit its theme parks, consumer products, and cable. Disney also obtained ownership of the world’s most famous computer...
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...Merger, Acquisition, and International Strategies Shonia L. Murphy Dr. Bennett Strayer University Bus 499 Introduction Any public limited company can grow through the process of either organic growth or internal growth or through the process of merger and acquisition. In the following pages two different public limited companies listed in the United States are taken. One of the animation companies has international exposure and a history of merger and acquisition and other solely operating in USA with no history of merger and acquisition. Discussion Walt Disney Company which is commonly known as Disney is an American diversified multinational company that is headquartered at Walt Disney studio in Burbank California. In terms of revenue the company is largest in the world. The business was established by Disney brothers namely Walt and Roy Disney in the year 1923. The company was a leader in the animation industry before it diversified into other ventures. Pixar on the other hand was formed in 1979 by George Lucus and his recruit Ed Catmull. The company was renamed as Pixar when Steve Jobs acquired majority stake in the company in the year 1986. After the demise of Walt and Roy Disney the company lost the initial success that it had with animation films. It was in this time that a series of animation films that were produced by the company did not farewell at the box office and the company suffered losses. On the other hand Pixar’s computer...
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...Analyzing the Walt Disney Company Damian Diaz MGMT 5120 Managing Organizational Design and Change Section 001 10/11/14 Overview and History The Walt Disney Company (WDC), headquartered in Burbank, California, was founded on October 16, 1923 by Walt Disney and his brother Roy Disney. WDC has five business segments which include studio entertainment, parks and resorts, media networks, consumer products and interactive media (Company Overview). With approximately 175,000 employees and an annual revenue of 45 billion dollars, the Walt Disney Company is one of the biggest entertainment corporations in the world (Fiscal Year 2013 Annual Financial Report And Shareholder Letter). Mission Statement The Walt Disney Company is a leading international entertainment and media enterprise founded in U.S. It operates five separate Disney segments: Media Networks, Parks and Resorts, The Walt Disney Studios, Disney Consumer Products and Disney Interactive. Disney Media Networks is the most significant Walt Disney business segment. Disney products include television programs, books, magazines, musical recordings and movies (Mission statement of Walt Disney). Studio Entertainment From the early beginnings, the company established themselves as a leader in the American animation industry. The iconic Mickey Mouse cartoon debuted on November 18, 1928 titled Steamboat Willie, which also marked the first appearance of Minnie Mouse. In 1932, Disney signed an exclusive contract with Technicolor...
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