迪士尼公司运营案例分析

Analysis Disney Company

The Walt Disney Company is an American diversified mass media corporation with touching every aspect of the entertainment industry, including publishing, television networks, educational materials, cable channels and Internet websites (Smith, Clark, 1999). And it also owns the theme parks all around the world. Disney Company became a “world’s best-known company” which was based on a lot of cartoon characters. Today it is one of the largest media corporations in the world (Siklos, 2009).

Development of Disney

Disney Company was formed on 16 October 1923, by Walt Disney and his brother Roy Disney in Los Angeles, which was named the Walt Disney Studio. “It all started with a mouse” (Wasko, p.9, 2013). Before the mouse appeared in the film, Walt did two cartoon series which was called Oswald the Lucky Rabbit and Alice Comedies. However, because of Oswald got involved the problem of copyright, Walt needed to search for a new character. In 1928, the idea of the mouse which was named Mickey came into his mind (Wasko, 2013). And then the great success of Mickey made the company rapidly growing up in Hollywood.

During the World War 2, Disney Company has been taken over by US Army troops a lot. However, this situation did not block the development of Disney, at that time, Donald Duck as one of the famous animal characters appeared in short film.

After the war, the way that Disney Company developed their films were becoming diversification. Walt started producing television programming with ABC and NBC, which made their characters to show themselves on television. This successful movement let Disney Company goes further — a theme park. The first Disneyland was opened on 1955 (Grover, 1997). Due to these great successful strategies,

Disney Company finally becomes a major independent film company in Hollywood (Wasko, 2013).

How does The Disney Company grow up?

The Disney Company uses diversification strategies to expand its market, which make them to achieve media monopoly and create enormous revenue. Those diversification strategies can be separated into two aspects, horizontal integration and vertical integration.

1. Horizontal integration

Since 1993, Disney Company never stopped their footsteps of acquisitions. Disney Company has acquired Miramax Films, Pixar, Marvel Entertainment and Lucas film.

“Horizontal integration enables a company to increase market power by cross-promoting or cross-selling a show” (McChesney, p.22, 1999). In 1993, Disney Company acquired Miramax which was a leader in independent film distribution (Wasko, 2013). This move made Disney Company had more market share for adult not only in children market. Through a series of acquisitions, Disney Company obtained more opportunities to distribute different kinds of films, which created new contents to Disney Company.

2. Vertical integration

In 1995, the first Disneyland opened in California. And now, Disney Company already has 7 theme parks around the world which bring Disney Company enormous income. According to the Disney annual report in 2014, Disney parks and resorts contributed $15,099 profits in 2014.