Hong Kong Disneyland When Big Business Meets Feng Shui Superstition And Numerology 1

PART A

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CASE STUDY 3
Hong Kong Disneyland: when big business meets feng shui, superstition and numerology

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John Kweh, School of Marketing, University of South Australia and Justin Cohen, Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing
Science, University of South Australia

E N V I R O N M E N TA L A N A LY S I S O F I N T E R N AT I O N A L M A R K E T S

BACKGROUND
Disney, one of the world’s most recognised brands, launched its most recent theme park in
Hong Kong in 2005. Hong Kong Disneyland, the fifth theme park globally, was created to service the Hong Kong market, but more strategically to reach the rapidly growing Chinese market. Hong
Kong Disneyland is located on Lantau Island, 10 minutes from the Hong Kong International airport and 30 minutes from the city via the subway (Holson 2005).
The theme park is a joint venture between the
Walt Disney Co. and the Hong Kong Special
Administrative Region (HKSAR) government
(Landreth 2005). The theme park is Disney’s smallest at 745 hectares, but still consists of four distinct entertainment arenas: Main Street USA,
Fantasyland, Adventureland and Tomorrowland.
Hong Kong Disneyland is based on the Anaheim,
California original (Landreth 2005).
Hong Kong has been chosen as the steppingstone into the vast Chinese market as most
Chinese have not grown up with Disney (Miller

2007). Another theme park in Shanghai is tentatively planned for 2010. Hong Kong, a capitalist economy where English is prevalent, maintains a sound legal and judiciary system and good corporate governance (Fong 1995). Thus Hong Kong has been an ideal choice for many corporations to launch into China. PricewaterhouseCoopers predicts a 25.2% rise in Chinese entertainment and media spending through to 2009, making
China the fastest growing market for entertainment in Asia (Landreth 2005). This can be attributed to the rapid growth of the middle class in
China, compounded with the

Bibliography: Brennan, Y.M. (2004) ‘When Mickey loses face: recontextualization, semantic fit, and the semiotics of Anonymous (1998) ‘Balancing tensions: Stephen Burke’, MIT Sloan Management Review, Vol on 12 September 2005, at exactly 1 p.m., a date and time believed to be most auspicious according to the Chinese Almanac (Miller 2007). Kong’ 2005). English-only policy for staff when it first opened (Brennan 2004). CHAPTER 3 Hong Kong’ 2005) (Miller 2007). Feng shui practices at Hong Kong Disneyland are prevalent of the theme park was shifted 12 degrees to maximise good energy flow (Holson 2005) incense burning was customary upon the completion of each building (Holson 2005). flow out the back of the park (Holson 2005). To ensure a balance of the five elements of feng shui, some areas have been designated as ‘no fire zones’ (Lee 2005) ensure that there were no kitchens in these areas (Lee 2005). ‘death’ in Cantonese and Mandarin and is considered unlucky (Yardley 2006). On the other hand, the number eight, considered lucky, is used extensively (Yardley 2006) wealth. For example, the main ballroom of one of the hotels is 888 square feet (Ho 2006) ease’ (‘Disney uses feng shui to build Mickey’s new kingdom in Hong Kong’ 2005) (Yardley 2006). Hong Kong Disneyland opened PART A