Cultural Differences In Eurodisney

Question 1

One of the major factors contributing to EuroDisney’s poor initial performance was the failure to recognize and responsive to cultural differences in the France in which Eurodisney operates. Cultural differences are reflected in distinct consumption patterns and trends such as the way people dress and foods they like (Luthans and Doh, 2012). Disney had failed to understand the importance of cultural adaptation in EuroDisney and misinterpreted Europeans’ tastes and preferences. Europeans’ eating habits were not taken into consideration as Disney had misunderstood their breakfast norms. An example of this would be downsizing of restaurants breakfast service because they assumed that Europeans did not generally eat breakfast. As a multinational

Due to lack of knowledge of their target market, EuroDisney relied mostly on American cultures and past experiences when managing Disneyland in other countries. By not recognizing the cultural differences between the United States and France, Disney had built and promoted Euro Disney as a piece of America that was not acceptable to the French’s culture. For instance, Disney has a policy of selling no alcohol beverages in all of their parks which then extended this tradition to EuroDisney. This policy has aroused the anger of the French as alcoholic drinks are considered as a regular beverage in their daily lives. Thus, it is proven that Disney is insensitive to the local culture as they had failed to recognize that the drinking habits of the French. Besides, Disney’s dress code that defined the nail polish colours and prohibits of facial hair has failed to meet the French standards in the workplace. The park staffs simply did not follow the dress code required by Disney as they thought it was against their principle of individualism. Consequently, the imposition of this dress code has negatively affected their staffs’ satisfaction and

It is crucial for Disney to acknowledge cultural differences between host countries and the United States. Cultural differences are reflected in distinct consumption patterns including eating habits and foods they like. Food consumption patterns of Brazilians are quite similar to Americans. Brazilians usually eat sausages, eggs, hams and bread with jam for breakfast. A study by Farina (2001) states that 25% of Brazilians tend to eat fast food frequently. This percentage is close to the Americans’ fast food consumption where 28% of Americans ate fast food regularly. According to a recent article by Utsumi (2014), Brazil is one of the world’s biggest consumers of soft drinks. This indicates that the drinking habits of Brazilians are also similar to the Americans. Moreover, Ali (2013) claims that Brazilians are high spenders and they enjoys short and frequent vacations, which has proven that the vacation behaviour of Brazilians is similar to the Americans. Hence, not only attracting tourists from other countries around the world, yet Brazilians will become the potential customers to Disneyland. An article on Ritz-G5 (2016) reported that Brazilians tend to take ten times more vacations than others citizens and willing to spent five times more money during their