Comparative Performance
Since the soft launch of Disneyland in Penney Island, Hong Kong, there is more than 11,000 people are visiting Disneyland everyday. Still, the million visitors that came through the amusement park's gates from August 16 averages The figures were released a day after Disney's rival, Ocean Park in Aberdeen, announced a record surplus of HK$119.5 million in the past fiscal year (D. Agostino, 2003). The SAR is Hong Kong Disneyland's majority stakeholder, with 57 percent of the shares. The park was built with HK$25 billion of Hong Kong taxpayers' money - about HK$3,500 per SAR citizen and about 10 times Disney's monetary investment. However, according to the Forbes.com Ocean Park is listed as the 7th world most visited theme park in the world. With its 4.03 million record- breaking year in 2005, Ocean Park ranked the seventh best-attended park in the world.
Most favorite destination in Summer
HK Ocean Park (29%)
HK Disneyland (20%)
HK Wetland Park (13%)
Ngong Ping 360 (8%) (Not officially opened yet)
Don't want to go list:
Ngong Ping 360 (37%) (Not officially opened yet)
HK Disneyland (33%)
HK Wetland Park (22%)
HK Ocean Park (8%)
source: Apple Daily News
Competitive Positioning
In the aspects of competitive positioning, the Walt Disney Company and its media products were chosen due to the following reasons (Hunger and Wheelen, 1996):
* Disneyland is among the most successful company in the theme parks industry.
* Disneyland is a successful corporation in the globalization arena as it was able to provide entertainment products worldwide as well as establish theme parks in Europe and Asia.
* The company is able to use state of the art technology in character designs and movie productions.
* Disneyland is able to create products under a strong and popular brand name.
* The company is able to successfully establish itself in the entertainment industry.
Proposed Improvement Plan
Disneyland and the whole Walt Disney Company is already a large, established and global company. Now, Hong Kong Disneyland, having Ocean Park as a major competitor, only needs to establish and maintain its clientele. According to Kotler (2003), customer relationship marketing enables companies to provide excellent real-time customer service by developing a relationship with each valued customer through the effective use of individual account information. Based on what they know about each customer, companies can customize market offerings, services, programs, messages, and media. Discount and club cards have been a strategy to developed similar loyalty schemes in order to identify and stimulate brand awareness. These database marketing and loyalty programs, the ultimate promotion strategies for the retailer are powerful, highly segmented customer-oriented forms of promotions, encouraging customer retention and purchase activation. One of the most important assets of many firms is the loyalty of its customer base. Measures of sales and market share are useful but crude indicators of what customers really feel about a firm. Measures of customer service and brand loyalty are more sensitive and provide diagnostic value as well. One way of accessing customer needs/wants is to examine customers' complaints and obviously try to respond to them (Kotler, 2003). As far as measurement is concerned, the most important point is that the range of instruments used and their sensitivity are appropriate to the clients under scrutiny.
Marketing communications encompasses wide range of advertising and promotions. Marketing strategies which comes with the marketing communications should be that effective to attract the consumers and be competent enough for the business market on the local and international scenario. When marketing communications and strategies are in concerned,
Competitor's Business Strategy
Ocean Park's theme attractions are the dolphin shows, cable cars and thrill rides and these has been a favorite with several generations of parents and kids ( D' Agostino, 2003). Tourists from mainland China visit Ocean Park. Although, upon the entry of Disneyland in Hong Kong, and Ocean Park will surely look low-tech, Ocean Park can still compete with Disneyland. They will be implementing some strategical measures to remain the most popular theme park in Hong Kong. Ocean Park needs to transform into an attraction that would catch some spill over from Disneyland and be what Sea World is to Disneyland and Disney World. Ocean Park will focus on live animals, not cartoon. Ocean Park will also bring some killer whales, beluga whales, polar bears, penguins, walruses, birds of prey, baby pandas and top thrill rides. By 2010 they will also be featuring a 1.4 kilometer cable car ride over barren hill with breathtaking views of South China Sea, from one of the park to another end. They are also planning to have a city subway system to the entrance of the park.
Performance Improvement
Perhaps, every organisation wants to initiate a management system and strategy that could maintain the organization's capability, strength and competitiveness (Wasko, 2001). Several trends such as globalisation and the advancement of information and communication technologies (ICT) have changed the way people run their lives and how businesses perform their services. These changes have made the competition tougher and business organisation should be able to find a way to cope to these changes in the market environment by enhancing or improving their organisational performance.
The outstanding profitability performance of a growing number of firms is not accidental—these firms profit because they have built world-class management systems. This does not mean that there is anything mechanical or bureaucratic in the way they operate. Quite the opposite; these firms shape their processes and methods so that they work together for high performance. These firms perform well because they are designed to grow in profit, size and management capability (McBride, 2000). Their managers focus on the behaviors, strategies, processes and measures that must work together as a system to find and satisfy customer. There are many factors that can be considered to increase organisational performance, and some experts are considering the concept of performance management.
Managing people may vary in different context and one of which is managing their performance. Management is the process of directing and facilitating the work of people organized in formal groups to achieve a desired goal (Matz Marketing Group, 2002). Management may not be indispensable to group activity, but it is essential in utilizing limited resources to accomplish maximum output, that is, in order to prevent wasted effort by individuals. Without some source of central direction and guidance, individuals in any sizable number can- not work together successfully or efficiently over a sustained period of time. In other words, formal organization of work and a high degree of specialization of labor make management imperative as the means for ensuring performance of any undertaking.
Like many modern management ideas, performance management originated in the United States. From there the concept has spread widely, as organisations look for systems or structures to reinforce their new-found focus on performance. In some cases, performance management has been just a new name for 'Management by Objectives' (MBO), where individual employees are assigned performance targets cascaded down from departmental or organisational goals (Martz Marketing Group, 2002). Others have used performance management to try to breathe new life into old-style performance appraisal systems which refused to work. Others see performance management as a mechanism for making performance -related pay decisions. Still others see it as a creature of 'new right' management and just another way to exploit workers (Philpott & Sheppard, 1992).
More positively, performance management may be seen as a total approach to managing people and performance. It involves setting performance aims and expectations for the organization as a whole, for each business or operating unit within the organization, and for work groups and individual employees (Hunger and Wheelen, 1996). This framework of performance management is now generally regarded as essential to the success of any system of performance planning and review.
Development Strategy
In business, strategy bridges the gap between policy and tactics. Strategy has been used in business to describe a variety of planning and mental modeling activities with a generally agreed upon purpose of charting a successful course of action for a firm or organization over an extended time frame (Mintzberg, 1994). Mintzberg (1994) argues that strategy emerges over time as intentions collide with and accommodate a changing reality. Thus, one might start with a perspective and conclude that it calls for a certain position, which is to be achieved by way of a carefully crafted plan, with the eventual outcome and strategy reflected in a pattern evident in decisions and actions over time. On the other hand Porter (1996) also argues that strategy is about competitive position, about differentiating yourself in the eyes of the customer, about adding value through a mix of activities different from those used by competitors. However, according to Jonas (2000) strategy defines how those things are going to be achieved; in other words it was been stated that strategy isn't the mission it's the plan that allows the mission to be accomplished. It is better to understand that strategy is about means, a means of relating to how will aims will going to be achieved or how this aims established and the most important thing is that if strategy has many meaning at all it is only in relation to some aim.
Strategic management today is seen in the environment driven strategies of successful firms competing in a diverse market. It is better to understand that strategic management is a necessary process for gaining competitive advantage, requiring the active participation of all functional areas. Furthermore, strategic management is designed to develop an awareness of the processes by which organizations can achieve synergies of the whole through the effective cooperation and interaction of the many departments within an organization (Alkhafaji, 2003).
Implementation
The long term strategies create the brand or the company's awareness and give sales revenue a permanent and continuing boost. Short term strategies build a temporary and immediate revenue boost by giving buyers an incentive to purchase. By applying both long and short term strategies, one can attend to immediate sales goals while building his business reputation and goodwill. Allis (2003) enumerates and evaluates each of the 4 P's:
Product- The management of Hong Kong Disneyland must develop package according to the needs of the niche customers in mind. If the customer's perception of the product or the service will match according to his needs or requirements, then eventually the target will buy and will develop his trust to the product or company. Furthermore, what the potential purchaser in considering buying is their perception of the product/service package, which may be different from an objective evaluation of the package.
Price- Pricing strategy is a conscious decision and forms a very important part in the marketing plan. Charging the price for the products and services should be determined the light of the niche prospect's likely cost-benefit ratio and the financial ability to pay according to the payment terms. Pricing decisions should take into account profit margins and the probable pricing response of competitors. Since Ocean Park is giving family package price, Disneyland might as well give their clients especially families with special discounts in their entrance fee, maybe they can implement a "ride all you can" package for families.
Place- In its business definition, the place is the channel where the product is distributed, sold and received by the potential prospects. Clearly without defining the niche prospects, it is impossible to set up the best distribution channels. The distribution system performs transactional, logistical, and facilitating functions in order to get the product to the target customers efficiently.
Promotion- Publicity or promotion is the probably the toughest section in any Marketing plan. Promotion decisions are those related to communicating and selling to potential consumers. When making promotional decisions, a break-even analysis may be made, since the costs can be large in proportion to the product price. This is useful to know the customer's value in order to know if additional customers are worth the cost of acquiring them.
Improving Planning and Budgeting
Being a worldwide company Disneyland must employ the following plan:
* Broader access to several resources, wider experience in efficient business operation, low-cost strategy and application of information technology.
* More diversified products and services and should to operate in various aspects of the entertainment business such as film, home videos, radio broadcasting, merchandise, television networking and theme parks. The diversification efforts of the company should extended effectively in Hong Kong.
* The company should implement low cost strategy, through this strategy, the corporation will be able to control costs without sacrificing the quality of their products and services. Moreover, the company will have the ability to minimize its financial risks through sharing initial investments overheads with a maximum number of participants outside the company.
Conclusion
Hong Kong Disneyland was able to enter and pave the way to be as one of the most popular theme park in the world. Due to the growing competition in the in the theme parks business, HK Disneyland have been able to adopt various strategies in management that had helped them to overcome certain challenges. Through strategic tools, companies are able to clearly identify its weaknesses and strengths as well as its opportunities and threats.
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