Group 3

Ken Chow

BA / BA (Hons) Marketing Management (133-19310)

Assignment

Module Code/ Name: MKT09909 Brand Management

Assignment Title (if applicable)： The Walt Disney Company

Lecturer /Tutor： Ken Chow

Student Name： Au Yeung Yuk Tai - Group 3

Napier Student No.： 40186963 ____________

CityU Student No.: __ _54080210______________________________

Submission Date： 23Oct2014

School of Continuing and Professional Education

City University of Hong Kong
BA / BA (Hons) Marketing Management, Edinburgh Napier Unviersity (133-19310)

Acknowledgement Slip

This is to acknowledge receipt the assignment from below student:

Module Code/ Name： MKT09909 Brand Management _____

Student Name: Au Yeung Yuk Tai

Napier Student No.： 40186963

Submission Date： 23Oct2014

Receive by：

Please retain this receipt for your record

1997 Words
Table of Contents

Company Background.......................................................................................................................... 1

Brand Elements .................................................................................................................................... 2

Brand Development Strategy - Customer-Based Brand Equity Model ............................................... 2

Brand Identity - Salience .................................................................................................................. 3

Market Segmenting and Targeting ............................................................................................... 4

Products and Distribution channels .............................................................................................. 4

Market Positioning and Competitive Advantages ........................................................................ 4

Brand Meaning - Performance ......................................................................................................... 5

Brand Meaning - Imagery ................................................................................................................ 5

Kano Model Analysis ....................................................................................................................... 6

Basic Attributes ............................................................................................................................ 6

Performance attributes .................................................................................................................. 6

Excitement Attributes ................................................................................................................... 7

Customer Requirements Tree ........................................................................................................... 8

Brand Response - Judgments ........................................................................................................... 8

Brand Response –Feelings ............................................................................................................... 9

Brand Relationships –Resonance ................................................................................................... 10

Conclusion ......................................................................................................................................... 11

Recommendations .............................................................................................................................. 11
Company Background

Walt Disney was established in 1923 and struggled through years of

unsuccessful characters and creations, but in 1928 it created a well-known

character of Mickey Mouse. Steamboat Willie is released with very first Mickey Mouse cartoon.

The Disney brand was well built on characters and animations, but, in

1955, Disney expanded his brand to theme park. Disneyland, the first

park opened in California on this day.

The company involved with more media opportunities, such as television, movies and music later,

such as Lion King, Beauty and the Beast. Though the various media opportunities, promotions and

advertising, it makes the brand become successful nowadays.

The Walt Disney Company, nowadays, is a leading international family entertainment and media

enterprise comprises five business segments: Media Networks, Park and resorts, Studio

entertainment, Disney Consumer Products and Disney Interactive.

We would be going to discuss about this well-known Disney Brand and its brand development

strategy.

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Brand Elements

Brand is the "name, term, design, symbol, or any other features that identifies one seller's product

distinct from those of other sellers.” Brands typically at least comprise name and logo, which means

intellectual properties, representing a certain or potential value.

The Logo of Disney brand represents the company offers fun and magic

experience to families and which is very simple but easy to remember

and recognize.

Several slogans were also created by the Disney to promote their unique selling point, such as ”A

magical world where dreams come true”, “magic happens” and so on.

Brand Development Strategy - Customer-Based Brand Equity Model

The Disney brand development strategy would be illustrated by the Customer-Based Brand Equity

(CBBE) Model, which is a Brand Equity model by Kevin Lane Keller. The concept behind the

CBBE is to build a strong brand and make how customers think and feel about your products.

Customers have specific, positive thoughts, feelings, beliefs, opinions, and perceptions about a

brand after experienced its products and services. When strong brand equity was built, the

customers would recommend others and buy more from you because they become loyalty and

dislike other competitors’ brand.

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Customer-Based Brand Equity Model for Disney Brand - Four steps

Brand Identity - Salience

Branch Identify means who the Disney is and how the Disney creates brand salience or awareness

and how to stand out.

The Disney brand is well-established worldwide, which creates perfect brand awareness and stands

out among the similar brands. All potential customers, regardless of its cultural, age or locations,

are aware of and recognize the Disney brand and its core products and characters, such as Mickey

Mouse and Donald Duck.

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Market Segmenting and Targeting

The Disney Brand targeted not only children but also their families. A multi-segment targeting

strategy is used, which means it serves numbers of well-defined market segments and it targeted the

families with average income and lived in urban area.

Products and Distribution channels

For small kids, Disney will provide a special channel called “Playhouse Disney” and Disney toys

for them. For teens, Disney has Disney Channel, Radio Disney, live-action films for them. Also a

well-known theme park, Disneyland, was built for the whole family. The animation and films aimed

to create feelings of magic and happiness and connected with the slogan likes “let the memories

begin” and “this is where the magic happens”.

Disney stores are usually located at large shopping malls and centers and the Disneyland theme

park are built in busy cities.

Market Positioning and Competitive Advantages

The Disney is not only a simple theme park, movie and animation providers. It aims to make

children and its families feel warm-hearted and full of joys after gone to park or watched the films.

Disney is advertised and marketed with key words “Magic” and “Happiness”. This is also the

comparative advantage of the Disney compared with other entertainment enterprise.

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Brand Meaning - Performance

Branch meaning is about what the Disney stand for and it can be expressed in two aspect

“Performance” and “Imagery”.

Performance means how well the products meet the customers’ needs. The performance of the

Disney is already moderately high. It offers high quality products, services and expectations.

Disney usually goes further compared with other entertainment companies and it would attempt to

make audiences and customer beyond expectation.

Brand Meaning - Imagery

Imagery means how well the brand meets the customers’ needs. Disney’s Image is not only an

entertainment provider and it would provide magical, fantasies and happiness to the “guest”.

Audience who watched films of Disney or Guests who gone to Disneyland would feel warm-

hearted and full of joys.

In most customers’ mind, Disney’s image was clearly established, which represent fantasies and

happiness. Disney successfully create image of magical and happiness by its associated products

and advertising. The terms of “happiest place on earth”, “Where dream come true” or “Where the

magic begins” will be often used to describe image of Disney.

Through the Kano Model Analysis, it would further illustrate how Disney meet customers’ needs

and satisfaction by their “performance” and “imagery”.

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Kano Model Analysis

The Kano model analysis is a means of measuring customer satisfaction based on an analysis of

customer wants and needs. The Kano model analysis looks at three key areas:

Basic Attributes

Basic Attributes means the minimum expectation a customer have about a product. In Disney,

customers at least can get fun from watched funny films and animations, and feel excited while

playing various riders in Disneyland park.

Performance attributes

Performance attributes means features above and beyond the necessary that may differentiate a

product from those of its competitors.

Firstly, the Disney provide various innovative riders in Disneyland park and create numbers of

innovative with special effects, and the character in movies and theme parks are very funny and

well designed.

Second, Disney also provides excellent service. Customers will be called as “guest” instead of “Sir

or customer” and all characters like Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck are well-trained to be polite

and incline towards “guests”. Special care services will be provided, such as baby care center,

wheelchair and baby cars rental, and hearing and visual aids.

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Third, The theme park design and style like a magical world with many cartoon characters and

musical background, and stories in animations and films also like happens in a fantastic magical

world.

These make the Disney provide high quality product and services, which can fulfill the customers’

expectations and differentiate from other competitors.

Excitement Attributes

Excitement Attributes means those key differentiators that surprise and delight the customer.

Disney not only provides high quality product and services, but also creates the value of magical,

fantasies and happiness to the “guest”. Audience who watched films of Disney or Guests who gone

to Disneyland would feel warm-hearted and full of joys.

In most customers’ mind, Disney’s image was clearly established, which represent fantasies and

happiness. Disney successfully create image of magical and happiness by its associated products

and advertising. Terms of “happiest place on earth”, “Where dream come true” or “Where the

magic begins” will be often used to describe image of Disney.

These value and Disney’s image delight the customers and make them surprise and beyond their

expectations.

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Customer Requirements Tree

This Tree Diagram also illustrates how Disney’s attributes mentioned in Kano Model to fulfill the

customer’s needs.

Brand Response - Judgments

Brand Response is about how customer think and feel about the Disney based on their judgments

and feelings. Customers make judgments about the Disney brand according to its quality,

credibility, consideration and superiority.

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For quality, Disney maintained high quality of its products and services. Nice and friendly

employees and cartoon characters are well-trained by Disney’s own training school to serve the

customers and incredible service are also provided, including rental of baby cars. Disney got many

good comments in its products and services from consumers.

For credibility, Disney is expertise in lots of areas, such as implanting innovative products, adding

high likability attractions, etc. Disney is ongoing creating innovative movies and animation with

new characters and excellent special effects. Its trustworthiness is so high which creates raving fans

not only child age group, but also grown-ups. So, its credibility is very high and it gains the

reputation from customers.

For Consideration, customers will consider Disney does meet their needs. Most customers think that

they would be experienced a fantastic and joyful trip and beyond their expectation after using its

products as Disney providing the high quality and value products and services to them. They can

get what they need in Disney.

For superiority, customers get a fantastic and magical experience from Disney, compared with other

competitors. They got satisfaction and superiority in Disney as all customers are the guests for

Disney and being served with incredible services. Thus, Disney fulfilled or even beyond customers’

expectations and differentiate from other competitors.

Brand Response –Feelings

Feelings means how Disney make customers feel. Disney is a well-known entertainment brand

around the world and it automatically associated with the feelings of happiness and funs to

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customers. The Disney very much focus on creating feelings of warm-hearted, love, happy and

magic to the families by its innovative products. Besides, the continuous promotions, advertising,

community advertisements what Disney did evokes positive emotions feelings to customers. It

makes customers feel warmth, fun, excitement, security, social approval, and self-respect with the

brand. Disney successfully built the reliable brand name to consumer and these emotions help the

Disney to develop the deep relationship with customers.

After they built and retained the good relationship with customers, it helps to frame the resonance

between the brand and customers.

Brand Relationships –Resonance

After the brand identity, meaning and response to customers, the top of the brand equity pyramid is

brand relationships - the degree of connection between the Disney and customers.

Disney created brand salience and increase the brand awareness in the early stage. Through the

different aspects, such as product features, services, design and style, etc., they meet customers’

needs. Customers feel satisfaction with brand and able to build the relationship with Disney as it

generates the positive emotional feelings to them. Disney is unique because it has created fun,

magical by its strong collections of characters and innovative products. Customers feel a deep,

psychological bond with Disney and it achieved brand resonance with customers. Customers

become loyalty to Disney and they love the brand. Therefore they would make the repeated

purchase for the brand products. Also, they will help to promote the brand and develop a fans

community, e.g. Disney Fan Club.

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Conclusion

Disney brand is a well-known brand with prefect awareness worldwide. It creates clear and unique

value of happy, fantastic and magical to the all children and their families with their high quality

innovative products and services, especially the collection of cartoon characters, like Mickey

Mouse and Donald Duck. These also help Disney Brand also create high credibility and superiority

to their customers and all families are well experienced or even beyond expectation. These make

customers become royalty to the Disney brand and keep repeated purchase more and more or even

recommend others to enjoy it.

Recommendations

Maintain core brand value with innovative

Disney should maintain its historical core value of creating fantastic and magical memories for

families, which help Disney to be distinguished from others and sparks memories dating back to

consumers’ childhoods. However, the products created with existing cartoon characters or a new

character should keep innovative in order to keep the brand fresh.

Avoid over-expanded and overexposure

Disney is a world-wide well-known brand, which involves numerous business, including broadcast,

cable, radio, publishing, animations, films, toys, media, theme parks and so on and it impress much

on customers every day. Disney should avoid over-expanded and overexpose, which make Disney

company difficult to monitor and lower the operations effectiveness and efficiency, or even affect

customers’ feeling to brand.

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Managing branding structure

The Walt Disney Company maintain complex branding, such as ESPN, Walt Disney Animation

Studios, Pixar Animation Studios, Disneyland Park, disney.com and so on. It is challenging for

Disney to manage ranges of brands. Disney should well manage or simplify the branding, such as

collapsed some brands and remain the others in order to keep the Disney family brand remain a

clear and distinguish image.

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Reference List

Disney, Disneyinternational, Disney around the world, [Online], Available from:

http://disneyinternational.com

Disney, Official website, the Walt Disney Company, [Online], Available from:

http://thewaltdisneycompany.com

Keller,K. (2013), Strategic Brand Management: Building, Measuring, and Managing Brand Equity

–Global Edition, 4th Edition, Pearson Prentice Hall, United States

Kotler, P., and Armstrong, G., (2012), Principle of Marketing 14th Edition, Pearson Prentice Hall,

New Jersey

Marketing Mix, 4P’s of Marketing, product, price, place and promotion, [Online], Available from:

http://www.netmba.com/marketing/mix

Marketing M.O.Brand-strategy, [Online], Available from: http://www.marketingmo.com/strategic-

planning/brand-strategy/

Mind Tools, Keller brand equity model, [Online], Available from:

http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/keller-brand-equity-model.htm

Mind Tools, Kano Model Analysis, [Online], Available from:

http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newCT_97.htm

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Six Sigma, Customer Requirements Tree, [Online], Available from: http://www.sixsigma-

training.org.uk/#category/Latest/0

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