Disney Is an International Company, With Significant

Disney is an international company, with significant operations overseas. The company's media properties have a global scope, and it operates theme parks in a number of different foreign countries, including Japan, France and soon in China. The company also sells its consumer products and licensed merchandise around the world (Walt Disney Company, 2012). For the most part, Disney sees opportunity in globalization as it has the opportunity to expand its brands around the world.

The organizational structure of Disney highlights the company's approach to globalization. Disney views its brands as having universal appeal and has sought to market them using consistent strategies worldwide. That company's organizational structure therefore emphasizes product lines. Disney seeks to be a differentiated media and entertainment company with a global focus, rather than one that makes significant adjustments to its offerings when it moves into foreign markets.

As a media company, Disney is highly affected by changes in technology. Disney has used this technological change to enhance its digital media empire, and to spread its television networks like ESPN to create global media brands. Disney has embraced digital media platforms and has sought to evolve this particular business. At one point, it laid off a few hundred people in digital media in order to restructure the division and pursue different opportunities (Castillo, 2011).

The industrial organization model has been a key path to success for Disney. The hallmarks of this model are that a large organization fosters the development of the industry in such a way that there are few competitors, high barriers to entry and where it is relatively easy to predict the actions of competitors (Shennu, 2012). Disney was able to effectively utilize this model in the domestic market by capitalizing on the popularity of some of its early characters like Mickey Mouse. This popularity allowed Disney to become a large competitor. In its first few decades, the Walt Disney Company successfully defined its industry in terms of media conglomeration in films, television and other forms, as well as an entertainment company with hotels, theme parks and eventually a cruise ship line as well.

This model has made it difficult for new creative studios to succeed, because Disney has strong control over channels, and can effectively outmarket new firms. A main end user, children, is particularly susceptible to saturation advertising and Disney uses that strategy to win children as customers, blocking other creative entities out of the market. This tactic therefore inherently limits competition. In addition a high level of consolidation within the media industry gives that industry economies of scale that are difficult to match. To rival Disney's ability to make movies and market products based around those movies is highly unusual. Disney also buys up competitors who have this ability, like Lucasfilm (Snider, 2012).

The resource-based view illustrates how the resources that the company has contribute to enhanced profitability. With Disney, the primary asset that the company has always leveraged is its characters. These are exceptionally popular in many parts of the world, and the result is that Disney has instant credibility with a lot of consumers. People will inherently be interested in these characters, so Disney in effect not only has its own brand but half a dozen other marketable brands in its primary characters.

In addition, Disney now leverages its financial resources to acquire assets like Lucasfilm, and then applies its marketing talents and its media outlets in order to add value to the characters and other intellectual property that it has. This combination of resources is difficult for competitors to replicate, and that allows Disney to enjoy superior pricing power, superior costing power and therefore superior profits.

The Disney mission statement used to be "make people happy," which is simple but effective and allows for diversification but also understands why its products are popular. Today, the mission statement is to be one of the world's leading producers and providers of entertainment and information." This defines the business, but does little else. It does not provide inspiration and to an extent is does not even really explain the business well. In addition, this mission statement does not make it clear what Disney does to be successful, something that its earlier mission statement did (Rasmus, 2012).

The mission does reflect, however, a shift in Disney's mindset. Making people happy is no longer particularly important, as long as the company can "develop the most creative, innovative and profitable entertainment experiences and related products in the world." Note that "creative and innovative" are subjective words, leaving only profit as important. Disney's shift away from being a company that makes people happy to a company that makes people money is aligned with its strategies, but it was the happiness factor that got Disney to where it is today, not its ability to earn profit.

There are a number of different stakeholders at Disney that impact the overall success of the company. Government is one stakeholder, since Disney is a media company. Disney's ability to keep the support of government is critical to being allowed to conduct its business free from restriction, but it also needs governments to help it to protect its intellectual property. These protections are essential, since so much of Disney's success relies on its content and the characters that it has created.

Customers, however, are probably the most critical stakeholder to Disney's success. The company relies on them for income. When Disney wanted to make people happy, that happiness had those people opening up their wallets, and getting great value because they were happy. The extent to which Disney is going to be successful depends on the extent to which Disney is able to meet the needs of its customers in the future.