Nbcuniversal Annual Report

Theme parks need to continually offer the newest attractions to keep customers going back and the competition is fierce to create the newest, biggest and most popular attraction. Universal Studios continuously invests in new theme park attractions in order to maintain their competitiveness (“NBCUniversal Annual Report,” 2016, 14). To keep customers coming back time and time again it is imperative for the parks to keep presenting new offers. In addition, it is important to customize each theme park to its target audience. For example, Disney Shanghai was specifically developed with experiences to suit a Chinese audience (Garber, 2016, 168). In order to be competitive in new markets companies must identify the desires of the new cultural segment.

In a saturated market such as Florida it would be almost unthinkable for a new company to create a theme park. In other areas of the world however, there is more opportunity for new entrants. It takes a large amount of capital and time to move into the theme park industry, so the barriers to entry are high. Barriers to exit are also high. For example, Dalian Wanda Group failed at making successful theme parks in China and ended up selling the parks after very low attendance; one park saw 3,000 visitors in a week when it could accommodate 40,000. They lacked a complete, immersive world with popular characters – showing again the great importance of intellectual property (Ma and Fritz, Jul 20, 2017). Theme parks need to invest huge amounts of money just to maintain their position in the market (Clave, 2007, 413). For Disney, the largest theme park company, building its new park in Shanghai took five years of construction after ten years of planning and $5.5 billion dollars, and this reflects a large company with lots of experience in the theme park industry (Fritz, Jan 13, 2016). The investment in time, money and planning is huge and it is crucial to get it right. It is possible, however, that a company with a very large amount of capital could be a serious threat. Fantawild was able to build a chain of theme parks starting in 2005 and grew to having the 5th largest theme park attendance worldwide in 2016 (“TEA/AECOM 2016", 2017,