Analysis Of Disney’S Strategies To Meet The Customer Needs

Introduction

Disney, the kingdom of entertainment was founded by Walt Disney and Roy O. Disney in 1923 and is world`s leading tourist destination. Outdoor amusement parks and attractions have been among the most popular segments of the entire entertainment and recreation industry. Since Walt Disney World opened in Orlando, Central Florida's theme parks have been popular attractions in the last 20 years. Disney is a multinational, cross-platform conglomerate. Their business flourish in many different domains, including parks and resorts, consumer products, studio entertainment, media networks, and interactive media. The company is currently operating in more than 40 countries, and they really have taken issues such as labor, ethics, environment, philanthropy and etc. very seriously.

Size

Disney has six locations in the world, which is California (1955), Florida (1971), Tokyo (1983), Paris (1992), Hong Kong (2005) and Shanghai (2016). Disneyland is distributed all over the world. Inside the Disney parks, there have sensation and theme parks.

Services and products

Disneyland consists of different product and service to cater the customer. E. g. Baby boomer like to watch parade and fireworks; Honeymooners take a photo for weeding album; family bring the child to see stage show; students and generation Y enjoy the exciting rides and musical; children like cartoon character. In fact, all this entertainment facility is popular and caters all of the segments. Some targeted segments are: customer need, sightseeing, inspiration lake and recreation center, parade and fireworks, musical, honeymooners, spa in hotel, Disneyland theme hotel, cartoon character, ride and many more.

Mission and Vision

The Walt Disney Company has the following for its mission statement: “to be one of the world’s leading producers and providers of entertainment and information. Using our portfolio of brands to differentiate our content, services and consumer products, we seek to develop the most creative, innovative and profitable entertainment experiences and related products in the world. ”

Customer needs and Preference

Customer needs are things that a customer wants, needs or expects in a product or service. Customer preferences are expectations, likes, dislikes, motivations and inclinations that drive customer purchasing decisions. They complement customer needs in explaining customer behavior.

Identifying and Understanding the needs of customers

It is important to actually know about your customer’s wants, needs and desires. With this information you can create high value products and services and charge higher prices for them. If you do not know the deep needs of your customers, you will spend your time doing guesswork while creating products and services that do not sell and are not valued. We need to understand customer needs which becomes a priority in any business survival. Walt Disney has been able to identify and understand customer need. They have adopted and practiced three principles and encouraged their staff to do the same.

Ask your customers directly

When we are in business, we need to understand and identify customer needs, wants, and desires. We can directly ask our customer about their needs, wants, desires, what are their likes and dislikes about our organization which easily helps us to identify and understand the needs of customer.

Once Walt Disney grilled actor Kurt Russell for quite some time about the rides, what he liked or disliked about the park and other general questions. Russell was very impressed with how much personal interest Walt took in him. But then Disney ended the questions and moved on for the day. Only then did Russell realized that Disney was actually using him for market research. He wanted to find out what people thought about the park – so he asked them. And he would act on the feedback people gave him to make things better.

Listen for what people want and give it to them.

To identify and understand customer needs we have to listen to the customer and give what they want. If we do not listen to people we will not be able to know what they want and expects from the organization.

On one occasion some managers came to Disney complaining that guests kept taking a shortcut at on spot in the park by walking on the grass. The managers proposed a barrier to protect the grass and eliminate the shortcut. Disney had a different perspective. He told his managers to give the guests what they wanted and pave the shortcut. He had spent enough time on grounds to see firsthand how people liked to walk around his park and he wanted to make sure his guests remained happy while they were there.

Become your client and walk in their shoes

Disney himself could often be seen roaming the inside of Disneyland wearing sunglasses and a hat to disguise himself from autograph seekers. He would spend his time wandering through the park, buying the food, inspecting the lines, watching people and observing how they shopped, ate and moved.

Implementation of customer service standards

Customer service standards are a company’s rules or guidelines that inform and shape the customer’s relationship with the business at every step throughout the customer experience. Companies adopt these standards to empower customer service employees to resolve complaints, problems and questions as quickly and satisfactorily as possible, for both the customer and the company. Strong customer service standards can help a company retain more loyal customers and increase profits significantly.