foreign restrictions involving the culture, the economy, political issues, the basis for competition and the overall cultural forces, all of this led to a miserable first year of EuroDisney. If anything positive can be noted about these errors, they caused an overdue realization by Disney that Europeans are different and they must be treated this way.Disney misunderstood what is important to the French people, which caused them to stay away. "They had been expected to make up 50 percent of the attendance figures.and the French saw EuroDisney as American imperialism." The people in France have their own cartoon characters and they do not need American ones to be forced upon them as EuroDisney was doing. "Many French were hostile to the entire Disney idea from the beginning and a Paris theatre producer Ariane Mnouchkine described it as 'A cultural Cherynobyl.'" To the men from Disney, all of this French hostility was seen as amusement and was not taken seriously. The executives at Disney had no idea how much trouble their ethnocentric values played in the nonsuccess of EuroDisney the first year. Disney marketed EuroDisney like it markets in the United States. It did not keep in mind the cross-cultural issues that faced them by doing business in France. Ethnocentrism played a huge role in EuroDisney's failure. The executives at Disney failed to study and evaluate the imperatives in France as well as the languages of time, space, things, friendships and agreements. They also failed to realize that the European culture is broad and different marketing strategies need to be taken to market to the different European cultures. EuroDisney could have been a success from the start; instead many changes had to be made in areas of marketing and day-to-day operations. As Disney considers establishing new theme parks in other countries there are many things they should do before another disastrous opening like EuroDisney's. The countr...
