Secondly, we will investigate the competition among the local theme park Hong Kong Disney Land, and the mainland parks providers and will include a study of theme parks in Shenzhen, China, which are competing for visitors.
Thirdly, we will take the personal interview survey to find out satisfaction levels of visitors to Ocean Park, the local park and mainland theme parks and the comparisons will be made among them.
Fourthly, we will analyze the factors and marketing strategies leading to the success of Ocean Park and investigate the consumer behaviors on selecting their favourite theme park.
Finally, we will refer to the findings to do recommendations to Ocean Park for future strategies to maintain its market leader position.
Hong Kong is an international city. There are four key industries: financial services, trading and logistics, tourism, and professional services. According to the research data of the Hong Kong Tourism Board (HKTB) in 2008, there were 29 million tourists visited Hong Kong a year.
There are many famous attractions in Hong Kong such as Victoria Harbor sightseeing spot, Temple Street night market shopping and Ocean Park entertainment etc.,
Ocean Park, which opened since 1977, is one of the famous theme park in Hong Kong. The park provides featuring rides, exhibits and conservation facilities. There are three main sites of lowland, headland and Tai Shue Wan and those are connected by a cable car system, outdoor escalator and Ocean Express.
The main local competitor of Ocean Park is Hong Kong Disney Land (Disney).
Disney, opened since 2005, is the second theme park after Ocean Park to be opened in Hong Kong. Although Disney has a strong brand name and good reputation in the United States of America and around the world, it can not replace the position of Ocean Park as a market leader in Hong Kong.
Despite the challenges come from the Disney Land, Ocean Park also needs to face other competitors from mainland such as Shenzhen Happy Valley etc.,
That is why we would like to investigate and recommend how Ocean Park can protect its market leader position in the future.
Methodology
Firstly, we decide to collect the secondary data from the literatures and internet searches and to get a basic concept about the theme park industries. Then we will collect some information about the competitions among the local and the mainland theme parks providers. The data will be collected and analyzed on the company by SWOT (strength, weakness, opportunity and threat), in order to find out the competitive edges that Ocean Park is practising to maintain its market leader position.
After that we will focus on analyzing the factors and the strategies leading to the success of Ocean Park.
Secondly, we will collect the primary data by using personal interview survey method with questionnaires survey. The content in the questionnaire will include the criteria considered by customers when they choose their favourite theme parks, customer satisfaction evaluation and attractiveness measures.
The method will be conducted with personal interviews by taking samples in Hong Kong with the random sampling method.
We will work on 250 questionnaires which includes 50 for a mini survey. The mini survey is used to find the ratio between the local customers and foreign customers. This will give the relative coverage on the local and non local customers and avoid the customer locality bias. We will find if it is workable. We will do the main survey according to this ratio.
The interview will be conducted in Christmas holiday. We will use three days to conduct the interviews from (24 to 26 December). We will conduct it at the exits of Ocean Park and Disney and 100 respondents each will be interviewed.
After that, we will make the analysis on the data. The data will facilitate for us to investigate the factors with which the customers will use to choose their theme park and make some suggestions to the Ocean Park for future strategies to maintain its market leader position.
Anticipated problems and solutions
Problem(P):
The habits and favorites of customers cannot measure easily.
Solution(S):
Do more questionnaires up to 250 interviews that can increase the accuracy of the research.
P:
Questionnaire cannot show the interviewees’ psychological conditions.
S:
We will use observation technique to understand more about the psychological status.
P:
Questionnaires with close end questions can just be used for collecting simple data and we cannot know more detailed information.
S:
We can design some open-end questions to avoid this problem.
P:
Interviewees are not willing to cooperate with us to do the survey as it will waste a lot of their time.
S:
A clear and simple questionnaire is required to conduct the survey. It will make them to understand more easily and shorten the time.
Foreseeable contributions of this project
One of the jobs of the marketers is to find out the customer needs and try their best to satisfy the customers. Thus this project is a valuable chance for us to investigate Ocean Park strategies to maintain it market leader position, and we can apply to other organizations.
In addition, we will apply all of our knowledge, theories and skills that we have learned during our four years study. We hope we can recommend workable and achievable suggestions to Ocean Park
Limitations of the problems
A success or failure of theme park industries is relying on the customer service perception and the perception changes rapidly and is hardly to measure. Also, other external factors will also affect their habits to choose their favourite parks.
As we will search in a large volume of information between Ocean Park and mainland theme parks and we will also use a large amount of time to manage the information, the correct uses of the information in our analyses will become more important.
We are not be able to collect more detailed information of the future development plans of the local providers, and overseas parks model cannot be used in Hong Kong due to different culture around the world. The vigorous competitions are from mainland theme parks. The Chinese government policy will influence the Disney development in Shanghai and is not easy to predict.
