Walt Disney Company
When Walt Disney returned from work with the Red Cross during World War One, his brother got him a job at a Kansas City art studio, and he started to experiment with animation. He and his partner made a deal with a local movie theater to run their cartoons, and the popularity of these allowed Disney to create his own studio. After losing the rights to many characters, Disney pursued the Mickey Mouse character and the third Mickey Mouse film, Steamboat Mickey, was an instant success. Many of the famous friends were created shortly thereafter. The company's first feature was Snow White and the Seven Dwarves in 1937, and it was an incredible hit, allowing the studio to produce a string of other now-classic films (Biography.com, 2017).
The company expanded into television and by 1955 it had opened a theme park. Disney has since evolved into an integrated entertainment company, extending the life of its original characters and films for multiple generations, and around the world, via television, the Internet, a
Today, Interbrand (2016) has Disney ranked as the 13th most valuable brand in the world, and Forbes ranked the company as the world's second-largest media company (Le, 2015).
Globalization has opened up a
number of venues for Disney. The company was initially successful in the English-speaking world, but has been able to move overseas with a number of properties. Media is an easy product to move, but Disney has also been able to utilize theme parks to help build business in Europe and in
Asia. Furthermore, Disney's cruise ship lines take advantage of the ease of
transportation. Globalization has also brought with it some key legal elements that help Disney expand internationally, including international application of Western-style intellectual property law, critical for the protection of the company's trademarks and copyrighted content. Worth noting, however, is that many countries have limits on foreign ownership of media companies, which could serve as a barrier for Disney, and often means that Disney must work with local partners in order to gain full access to foreign markets.
Because Disney operates globally, but produces much of its media content in the United States, it incurs significant foreign exchange flows. Disney notes that foreign exchange rate changes can lower buying power for its goods in foreign markets, in addition to the exposure it has as…
