Euro Disney: Dimensions Of Culture, By Fons Trompenaars

Words: 1933
Pages: 8

Disneyland is one of the best known and most highly visited recreation locations in the world. With this visibility and audience reach, the action of the Disney Company extends well beyond the boundaries of their theme parks. However, once a foreign expansion experience, named Euro Disneyland did not prove to be the successful venture that had been anticipated by its creators.
Just a short time after the opening of the park in April 1992 reality proved to be not so magic. Euro Disney was much criticized, slipped into heavy losses and nearly went bankrupt.

The case of Euro Disneyland is widely analyzed and discussed, not only by scholars, but also by some management consulting companies. The factors that resulted in its failure
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Last but not least, French people like to sit down to have meals as they assumed, it’s not always true. Some people actually prefer to fast food, maybe because the price of the restaurants is too high.

2. Promotion and marketing strategy
From the beginning, the Disneyland didn’t show a friendly attitude to the French people and culture in the marketing and promotion activities. The Disneyland is the symbol of American culture, which is not so easy to promote and be accepted in different countries, especially a nation like France.

I charge the cross-cultural marketing skill of Disney as lacking cultural knowledge. On one count of, perhaps, having misinterpreted the data and information retrieved during the environmental scanning of the elements of European culture. On second count of wrongly measuring the degree of cultural sensitivity and tolerance inhibited but the French towards American culture. As we now understand, the Europeans have to be "attuned to the nuances of culture so that a new culture can be viewed objectively, evaluated, and appreciated. Just because a culture is different does not make it wrong. Marketers must understand how their own cultures influence their assumptions about another culture".

3. They didn’t make the adaption for customers with a different habit.
The average staying time at Disneyland for Europeans is only two day and one night. They often