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Six Flags Entertainment Corporation

Student’s Name

Institutional Affiliation

Six Flags Entertainment Corporation

Overview

Six Flags Entertainment Corporation is an American amusement company. It is also known as Six Flags. The company offers family entertainment parks, theme parks, amusement parks, and water parks to customers ranging from kids to senior citizens. The company was initially founded by Angus G. Wynne on August 5th of the year 1961 in Texas. The corporation possesses over 26 properties in the United States, Canada, and Mexico, and yet continues to spread in other countries. The company's headquarter is located in Grand Prairie, Texas. The Six Flags' amusement parks are located across the United States as well as Canada and Mexico.

Compared with other amusement firms, the corporation is the biggest amusement company based on their higher number of properties combined of theme parks and waterparks as well as their amusement parks have a maximum number of roller coasters in the world, and they rank seventh in highest attendance in the world. The major products of Six Flags are rides and attractions in the Park. The company's park is known for its record-breaking world rides. Unlike other amusement companies, Six Flags currently has a total number of seventeen roller coasters in the parks, which keep their ranking at the topmost in the world.

Moreover, Six Flags is neither an oligopoly nor a monopoly. Some multiple businesses or companies exist in the entertainment industry in the United States and across the globe. The Six Flags would not have the strength to become a monopoly, as the consumers in this particular market always desire new and variety of products experience for their entertainment. Hence, the monopoly, duopoly, trio-poly cannot exist in the entertainment industry and cannot dominate the market. Therefore, the company focuses on creating new products for consumers periodically. In the same context, The Company invests around 9% of annual earnings into its capital projects to build a new ride or attraction in each park annually. This also shows that the productions of these innovative products are capital intensive. The overall products of the companies are mainly targeted to the young population across the United Statement. The segments of their products target to teen population, families with young children, and adventurous adults.

The Six Flags’ key competitors in the United States are The Walt Disney Company, which is led by Bob Iger and Bob Chapek, the Executive Chairman and the CEO of the company, respectively. The company was founded by Walt Disney and Roy O. Disney, almost 40 years before Six Flag, and offers similar products as Six Flags, along with other additional products and services, including films, music, video games, and so on. Other competitors across the world include Musee Grevin, Wonderla Holidays, and Continuum Attractions. All these companies offer media and entertainment-related products similar or different products as Six Flags.

Price Analysis

The Six Flags Entertainment Corporation has a wide range of products and services that are offered regarding the different price tags for the various products, with a focus on targeting the different social levels of potential customers in the market. In 2019, Six Flags properties hosted 32.8 million guests. The main products in the market that I will cover are bath or body care, fragrances, skincare, men's line, and makeup. The company, therefore, engages the low-medium price policy while still enforcing strict quality control measures. The prices are set based on forces of demand and supply, as well as through assessing the prices that the competing companies set for their goods before placing theirs slightly higher than that, to target the high-end customers. The products that are offered by the company are inclusive of the entertainment industry. Such ensures that the company offers entertainment to all people and the content that is produced is essential and applicable to all the views. (Does sound like beauty products as copied from the sample document).

The strategy ensures that the company can effectively compete with its main competitors, including those that have employed low price strategies to conquer the market. Before the company built its brand in the market in the past decades, it would sell its products at low prices, employing a low-price strategy that boosted its initial market share. After gaining a large market share and discovering that its primary target in the market was people with considerable income, it raised its prices to the medium level, while still maintaining a few products with low prices that low-income earners can afford (Chun, 2016). Such is what is required to make sure that the running or the operation of the organization is intact and that it affects the company profitability and progress of any given company. Ensuring that people are comfortable in what they are viewing and experiencing regarding what is produced has been essential in the same. ( this doesn’t talk about SIX Flags products, please do not use the same references as sample).

At the end of the financial year 2019, the firm recorded 32.8 million US dollars; the company now targets women from the urban and cosmopolitan cities who are health and beauty conscious. That is the main reason for the rise in their prices since its customers belong to the higher income group. Since the brand has positioned itself effectively in the market as a natural care luxurious brand that caters to a high-end section of society, it can maximize profits greatly. It has also lately included men in their target customer list and has been marketing their products widely. In the entertainment industry, all factors are considered because men, women, youth, and children have to partake in the same. Having created considerable customer loyalty for its products in the market, the company can gather large amounts of money from its prices despite the rise in its pricing policy. Its target group of customers also believes in purchasing higher price commodities, as they believe such products are of better quality than the low-price ones provided by competing companies.

What they got right

The company focuses on the innovation theory, where they introduce a brand new ride and attraction in all the parks each year. In addition, the corporation focused on building unique products that tend to break the records worldwide and kept the company in the limelight and ahead of their competitors all the time. The products' uniqueness helps the company in sustaining in the market and in attracting new consumers as well as in maintaining the reputation with respect to their old or existing customers. As a result, all these parameters positively impact the company sells and overall revenue per annum.

Moreover, the company had developed its form of products per the changes in the era. The firm used to offer a different form of products initially, such as the cable transport called gondola ride, the shows based on historical era, stagecoach or 4-wheeled rides using horses, a railroad, and an adventure attraction based on a pirate theme, when they started. In later years, the corporation made changes to their products according to the consumer demand and modern generation. Besides a railroad, they replaced all their old products with roller coasters, parachute rides, log flume mountain rides, swing rides, and observatory tower decks.

The company's products were available only in the United States, Canada, and Mexico, due to which the company was only known to the population from the countries around North America. In addition to this, the company is in the process of developing their projects in Saudi Arabia as well as China to make their products available to some more countries. This is a huge step taken by Six Flags Entertainment Corporation that could allow them to gain popularity in Middle East countries and Asian Countries. This would not only help the company to grow their business or sales but also become popular globally and target the teen market, families with young children, and adventurous adults from the Eastern continents of the world.

What they got wrong Analysis

As mentioned earlier, the products of Six Flags are mainly available in North America; because of that, the company focuses on marketing their products only in this region. The company is not successful in gaining the attention of international visitors. Unlike the other competitors in the amusement park industry, the company does not invest money in advertising their products internationally. Therefore, despite possessing record-breaking world products and a comparatively higher number of products, the company failed to grow in terms of international consumers, like their top competitors. Hence, the competition became more difficult for Six Flags Entertainment Corporation.

There are a number of things that Six Flags Entertainment Corporation got wrong in its marketing strategy. The company does very little advertising of its products. An advertisement is a straightforward way of increasing market share. People tend to make their decisions based on what they see on social media, the internet, and other advertising platforms, as they believe those are the new trends in the market. Emerging companies that invest heavily in advertisements tend to pick quickly in the market. There is no way people can know of the emerging trends that the company has adopted, or its new products, except through the advertisement platform. It also enables people to understand the strengths and importance of the products being marketed, increasing sales (Chun, 2016). The company's competitors, including those that could not have come to the limelight like Maybelline New York that advertised heavily, are now beginning to gain ground in the market. People see on television, for instance, has significant influence and is likely to make even loyal customers decide to try new products they see in advertisements.

The second thing they got wrong, in my opinion, is the franchise system, which limits the level of control that proprietors have on all its stores. One of the things that place a company high on the market radar is its leadership strategy, mission, and vision. A company with a strong connection with the top management tends to perform better in the market, as it closely follows the guidelines put in place and the organizational culture. The franchisee system encourages the loss of organizational culture since employees at the bottom lack of connection to the top management. This reduces the level of trust customers have towards the organization, especially when loopholes such as poor customer service are detected in some stores. Sometimes, poor leadership may culminate in a lack of motivation for the employees, which means that they do not perform well for the organization. Some may end up being absorbed by competing companies and even leak the company's strategies to competitors (Chun, 2016).

Additionally, the company got it wrong in having a limited number of retail outlets. This reduced the company's ability to reach everyone interested in their products (Kemna, 2017). Such a thing makes people that are willing to buy their products but unable to resolve for purchasing a different company's products develop loyalty for the products and end up encouraging other people to join them in purchasing the rival company's products. (copied from sample).

Reverences

Kent, T., & Stone, D. (2007). The Body Shop and the role of design in retail branding. International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management, 35(7), 531-543.

Kemna, L. (2017). The body shop Indonesia (Doctoral dissertation).

Chun, R. (2016). What holds ethical consumers to a cosmetics brand: The Body Shop case. Business & Society, 55(4), 528-549.

Chairunnisa, S. S., Fahmi, I., & Jahroh, S. (2019). How Important Is Green Marketing Mix For Consumer? Lesson From The Body Shop. Jurnal Manajemen, 23(2), 321-337.