Business
The Walt Disney Company was established in the year 1923. For the last eight decades, the company had been known as the founder of quality family entertainment. Its humble beginnings can be traced back as a small cartoon studio which was able to transform itself to become one of the biggest global corporations of today. The company was able to maintain its goal of providing exceptional entertainment experiences of quality creative content and remarkable storytelling for its viewers.
The Secret behind the Success of Walt Disney
The secret behind the continued success of Walt Disney Company can be attributed to its expanded cable networks operations that enjoy significant reach, the its strong brand portfolio and diversified entertainment businesses. The expansion of its cable networks group is in charge of operating the ESPN, Disney Channels Worldwide, ABC Family and SOAPnet networks. Due to its significant customer reach of cable networks operations, the company has gained a competitive advantage that is cannot be matched by its competitors. Walt Disney’s content is being distributed in various parts of the globe across a wide base of subscribers.
The strong brand portfolio of Walt Disney Studios has been proven to be a big success at global box office records when the movie “The Avengers” by Marvel became 2012’s number one hit, and dubbed as the third-highest grossing film of all time. This movie alone earned an estimated $1.5 billion. The Disney Pixar’s Brave, Walt Disney Animation Studios’ creation “Wreck-It Ralph”, and Iron Man 3 manifest the company’s diverse creative box office hits. These global achievements had proven the company’s strong brand portfolio and diversified entertainment businesses.
Booming Revenues of Walt Disney
The company is able to keep a well-balanced revenue stream in terms of its segments. This was demonstrated in Fiscal Year 2012, media networks, where the company’s largest segment generated 46 percent of its overall revenues. Aside from this, its parks and resorts earned 30.6 percent in revenues, studio entertainment of 13.8 percent, consumer products of 7.7 percent, and interactive media of 2 percent. With these diversified entertainment businesses, Walt Disney is able to rise above with a downturn in any particular business.
Potential Risk of Walt Disney
It can be concluded that the company puts its main concentration of operation in the US and Canada only. This will increase the country specific risks of the company since it limits its growth opportunities on matured markets such as the US and Canada, which is an advantage to its competitors. The company is highly dependent on the US and Canada alone to earn majority of its revenues. However, the company keeps its presence in North America, South America, Europe, and Asia Pacific but targets U.S. and Canada was its main source of income. During the FY2012, the company generated an approximate of 75.1 percent of its total revenues from the US and Canada. This will result to a geographic concentration that does not reflect the global footprint that the company wants to establish. At the same time, it intensifies its business risk since it makes itself exposed to economic and political uncertainties in the particular market.
One of the threats that Walt Disney Company has to deal with is piracy. The piracy of motion pictures, television programming, and video content poses significant challenges to majority of the company’s businesses. Due to the emerging technological advances, it opened the opportunity for unauthorized dissemination of motion pictures, television programming and other content in vulnerable digital formats. One of the instrumentalities of piracy include the internet since its augments the threat of piracy. Based on reports, the DVD sales of Walt Disney had declined by more than 20 percent for the years covering 2006-2011.
Recruitment Policy of Walt Disney
Overall, the company was able to reinforce its desired organizational values by working with total quality management (TQM) that makes use of techniques and tools as part of the training norms and behaviors in an organization. The recruitment process at Walt Disney Company is more focused on hiring personnel who possess the right values who are welcome to become new members of the organization.
References:
Bartkowiak, Matthew J. Behind the Behind the Scenes of Disney World: Meeting the
Need for Insider Knowledge. Journal of Popular Culture 45.5 (2012): 943-959.
Business Source Complete. Web. 30 Mar. 2014.
Ingelsson, Pernilla, Maria Eriksson, and Johan Lilja. “Can Selecting The Right Values
Help TQM Implementation? A Case Study About Organisational Homogeneity
At The Walt Disney Company." Total Quality Management & Business
Excellence 23.1 (2012): 1-11. Business Source Complete. Web. 30 Mar. 2014.
MarketLine. “The Walt Disney Company SWOT Analysis.” Walt Disney Company
SWOT Analysis (2013): 1-9. Business Source Complete. Web. 30 Mar. 2014.
