The Internet Marketing of Disney Theme Parks

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to analyze the portrayal of gender and race in the images on the official Disney websites used to market five theme parks: the Disneyland Parks in California, Paris, Tokyo, and Hong Kong, and the Magic Kingdom in Florida. This is important because of the growth of e-commerce, Disney’s global influence, and the potential impact on those who view the images. The 452 images that had Disney human characters, human-like characters, animals, cast members, or guests were coded for gender. The main gender hypothesis, that the percentage of male-dominated images would exceed the percentage of female-dominated images, was tested using gender disparity values, which measured the gap between the percentage of male-dominated and female-dominated images. The hypothesis tended to be supported overall, and for most of the resorts (e.g., Florida), lands (e.g., Adventureland), and activities (attractions, entertainment, dining) for human characters, human-like characters, animals, and cast members, but not for guests. Furthermore, the hypotheses that gender disparity values would be highest for images of animals and lowest for images of guests was supported for all five resorts, six of eight lands, and all three activities. Additional analysis also revealed the preponderance of same-sex pairings in parent–child combinations in the images. With regard to race, while the images of some theme parks displayed more racial diversity among their guests than others, in some images, individuals of different races were shown interacting whereas in others they were not. Explanations for these findings and suggestions for future research are discussed.

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“…Returning to the questionnaire, when asks about people's favourite character in Disney, the answers vary a lot. But after the analysis of those answers, there are 6 people who don't have any favourite character; 16 people's favourite characters' genders match with their own genders, according to the calculation, it is about 61.54%; the other 4 people's genders don't match with the genders of their favourite characters [8]. However, the percentage of those results are adequate for us to conclude that Disney does consider people's gender identity while designing the characters, and characters may be more attractive to people of the same gender [9].…”

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