P1(d) Market position

Meaning & Purpose : Market position is how product occupied into audience mind to increase its market share. Product sale is proportional to the product sales. It is important customer fully understand your company brand. If people misunderstand your brand, your company will be easily replace by other competitor in the market. 

In this section , I will analysis how Walt Disney and Marvel expand their new market by crowdfunding through their stocks to able to spend on their latest project (movie, theme park , merge company) to keep the entire company running.

In 2009 , Disney bought Marvel Entertainment with $ 4 billion to expand its market to competitive with others company like DC comic & Dreamwork. The leadership of Walt Disney is to focus on generating the best creative content,fostering innovation and utilising the latest technology, while expanding into the new marketing around the world. As Marvel is a subsidiary company of Walt Disney, therefore it doesn't had its own stock price. 

To expand and develop a new market. Marvel need a provider to provide human resources and money,  which are all from Walt Disney.  For the money issue , Disney has its own stock which gather lots of share holder to provide cash for the subsidiary company.  It is because it require lots of money for human resources for a new movie, theme park and toys etc.  It can be understand as the more share holder, the production process of a new project will be finish fast and finally increase their annual income.

It is the screenshot of Walt Disney one month stock price, the share is rising rapidly and it increased 0.86% today so far.

Below is the annual report of Walt Disney in 2014. As you can see " Studio Entertainment" , it had an sharp increase of income. Between 2012 and 2013 , only 3% of income increase, however between 2013 to 2013, 22% of income had increase. This result had clearly showed that the market position of  Walt Disney was mainly focus on Studio Entertainment product such as movie of Marvel & Disney itself. It had a great increase of income which means the products were great and able satisfy the target audience. It gives an image to the audience that Marvel & Walt Disney are great of doing movie / animated movie. 

Theme Park 

The screenshots below showed the Global Theme park Attendance & Top 15 Theme Park in Asia Pacific. The top 8 of Global theme park attendance are all Disney world theme park. The top 15 theme park in Asia Pacific, 3 of Disney theme park are also on the list. It clearly showed that the market position of Walt Disney is not only focus on Studio Entertainment. It also aim for theme park & resort. Most of the Theme park market were occupied by Walt Disney. Therefore Walt Disney had a great success on market position. 

P1(c) Products

Cross Media Divergences 

Meaning & Purpose : Product is the items of the company that produced which is to sell to customer and increase their income. For a media company (Marvel), their very main product is Movie & Home Entertainment. In this section, I will analysis how Marvel had able to maximise the profit by selling their main product - movie and also other industry. 

Marvel is a cross media company,which their market is not only media theatre and home entertainment. They have also co-operate with lego company to form a play station and xbox video game. All the characters in the games are all related to the movie that they had recently produced and from comics in the year or past. As video gaming is a big market , by producing video game , Marvel can earn more money from the title of the movie and promote their own company to the gamers.

Here is a data of video games market in USA between 2010 and 2014. In the Digital console games column, there are more than 700 million dollar growth in just 4 years of time. Therefore it is very important for Marvel to expand the video games market to earn the share from the market.

From the Marvel annual report of 2014.The company had increased 20% of spending on " Home Entertainment " , it included video game and DVD spending. Again when " The Avengers" shown in the cinema, it had been on the screen for over two months. Because most audience had a very positive feedback on the movie, therefore Marvel had produced lots of side products like video games, toys and clothing etc.

Before the company start filming " The Avengers ", they also made lots of movie series like " Iron Man " , " Thor "... All the movie below are all related to the  " The Avengers " storyline. The movie below is only related to the " The Avengers " storyline, Marvel had produced far more movie than I showed below.

- Captain America - The First Avenger
- Captain America - The Winter Soldier
- Iron Man 
- Iron Man 2
- Iron Man 3
- Thor - Courage is Immortal 
- Thor - The Dark World

Iron Man series is one of the very original movie that bring  Marvel became famous in the worldwide. The series had brought a huge profit and popularity as one of the movie in the series had a  top ten box office in the world.

The movie of Captain America is based on the history of second world war. The movie does not have a good reputation of box office as most people found it was quite boring when it combine to the history. All the background setup was back to 1930 - 1940s, most people found it was very old style and doesn't reach their expectation.

The Character setup of Thor is based on northern European mythology. The story setup is very suitable for male teenagers as it has a complicate storyline. It had a excellent box office in the world wide. Currently there are only two movies in this series, the third chapters is still in production and will be release in 2018.

As the target audience of the movie are most young age teenager & young adult. Marvel had an online shop which allow the teenagers to purchase lots of superheroes costume. It is also a way for marvel to promote themselves by increase the amount of people who wear their product. More importantly, by selling accessories online. It increases profit for the company.

As Marvel's movies are very popular all around the world. The company had produce lots of entertainment product like toys ( Special Edition ) and sell it in the local shop. Hamleys is one of the biggest toyshop in UK and it had more than 50 toys on sell online. The toys are suitable for age between 5 - 16 which are the similar age of the movie target audience. It helps the company to increase their income by selling toy to children.

P1(b) Operating model

Meaning and Purpose :  Operating Model in a company is to separate works into different department. It can increase the efficiency and able to reach the best requirement of the project. The purpose of this section, I will analysis how the company of Walt Disney (Parent Company) is so successful and able to control their subsidiary company. 

As Marvel is a subsidiary company under Walt Disney. All the human resources, financial, marketing decision were all made by Walt Disney. It is very important for Disney separate all the work clearly as it has more than 3000 people working at Walt Disney.

Here is the management team that I found on Walt Disney website. It had showed all the Management  Team leader below. I had picked some of the important person in the Team who are related to the Studio and Media management.

 Information Resources from : https://thewaltdisneycompany.com/about/#leadership

Investment : The Investment team in Walt Disney will made decision to decided how the market could be expand by merging with different company. It can increase the market share and will be less competitor in the market. It can increase the amount of avenue profit by more amount of human resources.

Software Development : In a media company like Disney, it is very important to have a own team which only develop software for their movie product. As movie in now a days, it has a high demand of using green screen and CGI effect. Therefore Walt Disney must has their own team to programme a software to help its company to complete the animated movie.

Financial : As Disney is the second largest media company in the world.  It is important for a company to have a professional team to do the financing issue. Disney has 18 different subsidiary companies. The finance team will had to make a decision to calculate the amount of money that will provide to the subsidiary company to run the business such as : Marvel. Marvel will then use those money to produce any form of media product such as ( Movie & Home Entertainment )

Financial Planning & Tax : The different between the Financial team & Financial Planning & Tax team is Financial Planning & Tax team will try to minimum the amount of tax paying off to the government. They will try to use the tax money and spend it on the company as much as possible rather than paying to the government. The money will be spend on better equipment , merge with other company etc.  It is a very important team in the company as it expand the market and competitive with other media company.

Marketing : The marketing team in Disney will study, what kind of product does most of the audience really want from the company. They study the trend and co-operate with the finance team then decide the amount of budget that will provide to another department or to the subsidiary company. In recent year, superheroes related movie are being more and more popular, the budget that provided to the company like Marvel will be producing related product to achieve audience / customers requirement 

Human Resources : In a second largest media company like Disney, it is very important to share data , information ,technical director , engineer ... etc. with their subsidiary companies such as Marvel. All the information & specialists will help Marvel to increase the efficiency to finish the media product. For example if Marvel had issue with any technical problem , specialists and engineer will be able to help Marvel to move forward with the project.

Media Network : The media network team in both Marvel and Disney control the media programme such as : Global Entertainment ( Movie ) , Television Properties , Radio Business & Internet. All the media will be under control by the media network team to ensure the company will a sustainable development through controlling the amount of product expose to the public.

Information From : 

https://thewaltdisneycompany.com/about/#leadership

P1(a) Ownership

Meaning & Purpose : Media ownership means where is company is owned privately / public by Government / merged with other big media company. Marvel is currently under the ownership and operate of Walt Disney since 2009.

Marvel Entertainment LLC

Marvel is a media production company.It produces wide range of media product such as theatre films, home entertainment, video games & pay and free television board cast. The profit of every project they did will be use for exploring and develop a new market for the company. Every decision they make had to be agreed by the shareholder.


In 2009 Walt Disney Company had bought down the whole company of Marvel Entertainment as a subsidiaries company . Marvel is currently under the ownership and operate of Walt Disney. Marvel will be continue on working theatre movie about superheroes from the comic. It will be no intercept with Walt Disney animated cartoon or others .


Subsidiary company is a company which is owned by another company (Parent Company) . Being a subsidiaries company have quite a lot of advantages, The parent company has the means of providing buying power, research and development funds, marketing money which other features the smaller company could not afford or accomplish alone. At the very beginning of the Marvel Entertainment, it has a very low yield of media product as it didn't have much fund to produce any high quality movie. However in 2009 , Walt disney bought Marvel and Marvel had boost their product immediately.   However being a subsidiaries company (Marvel) had limited of freedom to manage major decision included product finance and other major topics. Also, there are lots of extra legal and tax work for subsidiaries to do for company like Marvel to take on any action. 

The Walt Disney Company is a multinational ownership, which means that the company has either investments or operations in other countries. It has diversified multinational mass media cooperation headquartered at the Walt Disney Studios in Burbank, California. It is the world's second largest broadcasting and cable company in terms of revenue. 

All the investments that Walt disney was to increases the income for the company. However the main advantage of multination company is different nations had different amount of taxes. So company can avoid money being pay in high tax country and increase the income for the final revenue.

These screenshots shows the amount of money is been spent on different activities of Marvel Studio.Compare to September 28 , 2013 and September 27 , 2014 . The spending of theatrical distribution had increased 30% and the Operating Income had also increase more than 100%. 

In 2010 ,the second year when Walt Disney had invested. The net income for Marvel in 2010 was only $ 4313 million. Over time, when Marvel abled to produce more product due to the increased amount of fund by the Parent Company. Marvel was abled to earn double amount of money in 2014 compare to 2010. In 2010, Marvel had only 1 movie published in the cinema. In 2014, there were 4 movies published in the Cinema. All the evidenced from the revenues report can shows that Marvel getting into business by being a subsidiary company under Walt Diseny. 

Information Above From :

 http://cdn.media.ir.thewaltdisneycompany.com/2014/annual/10k-wrap-2014.pdf 

http://www.newsarama.com/24999-disney-s-4-billion-marvel-buy-was-it-worth-it.html