Euro Disney - Analysis of the External and Internal Environment

Euro Disney’ marketer’s before entering a market as in this case has been the European market should have scanned the environment. By scanning the environment they should analyze the mega-environment as well as the task environment for possible opportunities and threats. Yet, a close attention could have been paid to their strength and weaknesses inside the company. Indeed, the consideration about any trends should have been incorporated in their environment analysis.

In this case there has been a recognition of a trend, which is the trend of people going to theme parks during the weekends for entertainment of them as well as their children. Also here is an existing need for entertainment of this kind. Therefore, an opportunity exists in the European market that Euro Disney could have taken advantage of. However, their failure to pick up signals from the macro environment and microenvironment as well as to position their product accordingly, had negative effects on their operations. A further analysis of their macro and micro environment highlights their malfunction.

MACRO ENVIRONMENT (P.E.S.T)

The components of the macro environment are the political-legal environment, the economic environment, the socio-cultural environment, and the technological environment in which Euro Disney operates.

Political-legal environment:

Euro Disney’s decision to open its Theme Park near Paris has caused a negative publicity in the sight of many French politicians. In fact, they have objected the existence of Theme Parks in the center of their French culture since the park has been viewed as a visible symbol of the U.S. culture. Although Euro Disney marketers probably choose this location, in particularly France, due to the fact that is the center of Europe and could most probably be the most convenient place for people to arrive and settle in their hotel to be entertained. For instance, people from all over Europe could travel quickly to Paris due to short distance and travel convenience like people from Germany or Spain could quickly and conveniently arrive in Paris.

However, the ignorance of the politicians’ unfriendliness and deterrence caused the dire publicity to be spread all over France and probably wider. Politicians are usually the most publicly articulated figures. Thus, their opposition view would probably be spread to many potential visitor...

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...were the major reasons for the lower sales. They overlooked the opportunity to profit on the established costumers need for Theme Park entertainment because they did not realized who in fact were their customers.

STRENGHTS AND WEAKNESES

Euro Disney’s major strength is its well-known and established tradition and brand name. Further, Euro Disney is a conglomerate company comprised of many businesses. The existence of their own television programme is in fact a strength, thus transformed into opportunity to advertise its products and parks. Indeed, its strengths or distinctive competences may have been turned into opportunities to experience a competitive advantage over its competitors. Obviously, Euro Disney did not used effectively its strength in the European market, thus has overlooked to transform its strengths into opportunities.

In addition, one weakness that can be concluded from the case study is Euro Disney’s ineffective marketing team when entering the European market. In fact, it is a failure of its marketing team to quickly react to the threatening environmental signals and especially predicting them before entering and positioning itself in the European market.