When first movie " A New Hope" was released in 1977, it was a huge buzz in USA. Different than other products of developing movie genre Sci-Fi, Star Wars was realistic with an exceptional scenario, phenomenal characters and a whole new world experience, - of course along with lots of light-saber action and space ships. Accordingly, George Lucas extended the classic series with two more movies only to be followed up by new sagafirst released in 1999, explaining how Darth Vader rose to power.

In the 2012 Star Wars franchise (property of Lucas Film) wasacquired by Disney with a record-breaking 4bn$. Obviously,Disney likes to convert his investment to cash flow and they quickly agreed with the young generation's most acclaimed directors for new series that will spun over 2019 with 3 new canon movies while expanding the market with TV Series and other platforms. Apart from the movies Star Wars franchise have lots of collectibles, figures, theme parks, comics and even itsown religion! Yet, there are couple of issues for Disney to be concerned with. First of all, Disney represent "children" while Star Wars is more adult. And in tangible world, fathers of today have grown watching the adventures of Millennium Falcon but their children only met with classic series or just heard about them. Second important question for Disney is "how they will sell something which has highly loyal customers but hard to satisfy?" We know that Disney's previous campaigns -targeting kids, were highly successful but Star Wars is a tough cookie.

While dealing with the "parents" is a huge issue, kids are not so easy as well. First Star Wars was looking nothing else in 1977, but sci-fi genre have developed and nearly everything is space related right now. Today's children on the other hand are pretty good with technological devices in which they can access to every information.

Recently Disney also integrated Star Wars brand to their online movie streaming platform Disney Plus. The critically acclaimed TV series The Mandolarian is the main driving force for the franchise recently. Keep in mind here that, Mandolarian is the first TV series on whole SW franchise with real actors not animation. But Disney Plus have animations such as Clone Wars and Star Wars Rebels as well. Disney is trying to establish a new Star Wars fan base from younger generation with new stories and expanding the universe.

On the other hand, Star Wars fans do not need to wait for movies or tv series to shoot, they can enjoy comic books and books as well particularly due to pandemic. In these comic books and books, Disney management have decided to disband any prior stories to the acquisition of the brand by Disney, and formed their own canon story with new elements. Now all the previous books and comics are labeled as Legends and they are not included in the main story universe. This has been criticized by many of the older fans. As you might guess, most of the fans are pretty heartbond to the prior materials, they feel they are distracted from their own memories with the franchise.

On the other hand, entertainment industry is very different in sense when compared with conventional marketplace. While pace is immense, fans are so hard to please, technology both a foe and friend it is very hard for entertainment marketers. Therefore, Disney's acquisitions are not only limited to Star Wars franchise but spans over many other franchise and entertainment sector stakeholder.

Questions:

1. As a first task, please visit and examine the Disney's website: https://thewaltdisneycompany.com/

2. What is the company's mission?

3. Define the businesses (product) portfolio of Walt Disney.Discuss the consistency.

4. With the Star Wars acquisition, which product-market strategyDisney applied? Why?

5. With the Star Wars acquisition, which market targeting strategy Disney applied (Differentiated or Concentrated)?Explain why?

6. Please define the primary target market of Instax brand and products? Who are they? And explain Why?

7. Before Disney acquisition, which stage of PLC Star Wars brand in? How did Disney modify this?