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Make People Happy!
By Shlomo Maital
Walt Disney, a struggling cartoonist, was working out of a small rodent-infested shed near a church. Seeing a small mouse inspired him to draw a new cartoon. That was the start of Mickey Mouse. Fast forward: Walt Disney Corp. has a market value of $190 billion and employs 230,000 people.
Disney had a vision to create a theme park called Disneyland. The banks did not understand his vision and turned him down. He eventually raised $11 million, and in one year, built and opened Disneyland in LA. It was an instant hit.
To motivate Disneyland employees, Walt Disney needed a mantra – a three word description of what they are meant to achieve. His mantra was: Make People Happy. Everyone, including those sweeping the streets, knew it and worked according to it. If a visiting family asks the street cleaner, excuse me, where is the Dumbo the Elephant ride? The response could be: I don’t know. It’s not my job. I just clean the streets. Or: Take this path, and at the end, turn left. If your job is to ‘make people happy’, you know what to say – and to learn the layout so you can answer tens of questions daily.
Make People Happy is not just a great mantra for Disneyland and Disney World. It works for all of us. Make people happy – others, primarily, and of course, ourselves. A happy body is one in which our amazing immune system is working best.
Years ago, we took our children to Disney World. “That was the best day of my life,” one of them said, with a big smile. Making people happy is a worthy purpose in life – for Disney, and for each of us.
Euro Disney Pricing: Pure Mickey Mouse!
By Shlomo Maital
If you’re a manager or entrepreneur, here is a 100% certain proven way to get into hot water. Take the advice of economists. I should know – I am one of them.
EuroDisney is a good example. According to basic microeconomic theory, if you can segment markets with different prices, then you set prices inversely to the price sensitivity (or, elasticity) of demand. Low sensitivity? High price. High sensitivity? Low price.
Many Europeans buy Disney packages on-line. That means that Disney can charge people from different countries, different prices, because the Internet knows where you are. And of course, that’s just what Disney does. Disneyland Paris practices “geo-blocking” (Global New York Times, July 30, p. 18). “For an identical stay, the Euro Disney website often offers higher prices on German computers than on French ones.” Euro Disney had 14 million visitors last year with prepackaged prices. This year? Geo-blocking.
So what’s wrong with price discrimination, if you’re a monopoly and can get away with it? For one, it is not legal. The European Commission says national borders are supposed to be erased, and prices should be the same for all.
But worse than that — discriminatory pricing causes major resentment. Imagine that you bring your family from Berlin to Disney Paris, and find that your neighbor, on the merry-go-round, from Paris, paid half what you did. I know – it happens all the time on airplanes. Nearly everyone on the plane has paid a different price, from very high to very low.
Disney could say: If we charged one price, we’d have fewer customers, and would have to charge EVERYone much more to recover our costs. But this is pure Mickey Mouse!
When economic theory and profit maximization collide with basic fairness and empathy for customers, paying high prices, empathy should win. In the long run, it is simply good business. Beware of what economists advise. It is based on math, not on people.
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