On September 28, 1994, Disney officials announced the end of the Disney’s America project in Prince William County, Virginia. Two representatives from Disney’s America flew to Richmond to brief Virginia’s Governor George Allen on the decision. The same day, Prince William County officials were notified as well. Peter S. Rummell, president of Disney Design and Development Company, issued a public statement, saying in part: We remain convinced that a park that celebrates America and an exploration of our heritage is a great idea, and we will continue to work to make it a reality. However, we recognize that there are those who have been concerned about the possible impact of our park on historic sites in this unique area, and we have always tried to be sensitive to the issue. While we do not agree with all their concerns, we are seeking a new location so that we can move the process forward. . . . Despite our confidence that we would eventually win the necessary approvals, it has become clear that we could not say when the park would be able to open—or even when we could break ground. The controversy over building in Prince William County has diverted attention and resources from the creative development of the park. Implicit in our vision for the park is the hope that it will be a source of pride and unity for all Americans. We certainly cannot let a particular site undermine that goal by becoming a source of divisiveness.1 Rummell stated that Disney would try to build an American history theme park elsewhere in Virginia, but that a site had not yet been selected. Many Virginia politicians were disappointed, but some tried to remain optimistic. Governor George Allen’s office issued a statement: “I’m committed to a Disney theme park in Virginia and the jobs that will be created thereby. I’m pleased that the Walt Disney Company shares that commitment.”2 Robert S. Skunda, Allen’s Secretary of Commerce and Trade, commented to reporters, “I think they see the likelihood of long-term damage to their image. No company likes to be publicly bashed when they feel as though they are doing something that is worthwhile. . . . The thing that a company values most is its reputation. It has to. Without a reputation a company cannot continue to exist. I think those things drove Disney away from the Haymarket site.”3 Prince William County executive James Mullen said the county would be forced to go through a time of self-examination following Disney’s exit. He stated, “Mainly I’m disappointed for the people in the community who supported the project and for our staff, who put so much time in on this. Disney certainly hasn’t helped our marketing effort. They’ve made it very difficult for us to overcome the perception that this is a place (where) you can’t do a big project without a hassle.”4 Other local politicians were not as generous in their remarks about Disney. State Senator Joseph Benedetti of Richmond stated, “Promises were made that they’d stay, come hell or high water. Whatever they do is going to have to be written in blood next time.”5 State Senator Charles Colgan of Prince William County stated, “I think they broke faith with us.”6 James McPherson, the Princeton history professor and one of Disney’s most vocal opponents, stated, “I’m very happy. It’s good news.”7 McPherson said that he would be happy to help Disney find another location in Virginia that would be less significant historically. He stated, “Some of us would be quite happy to advise them. This has never been an attempt to bash Disney.”8 Over the next few weeks, scores of municipalities wrote newspaper articles and petitioned Disney directly, stating that they would welcome a Disney park in their areas. Since the decision to halt plans for Disney’s America in Virginia, observers have tried to make sense in retrospect of the park’s failure. In 1998, Eisner issued a memoir, Work in Progress. In a chapter devoted to the Disney’s America project,9 Eisner freely and openly admits that Disney made many missteps, while still arguing for the vision he had for the theme park. Among the missteps Eisner identified were • Naming the project “Disney’s America,” which implied the company’s ownership of U.S. history. He said, “That was unfortunate because we were never interested in a park that merely reflected a Disneyesque view of American history.” • Failing to “recognized how deeply people often feel about maintaining their communities just as they are. . . . There may have been no collection of people [the Piedmont Environmental Council] in America better equipped to lobby a cause, whether with Congress or government agencies or through the media.” • Being “blindsided” by the issue of proximity to the Manassas Battlefield Park. Jody Powell’s advice had been that the distance of three miles would be great enough to avoid controversy. • Believing Disney “could announce the project on [its] own timetable. Our focus on secrecy in land acquisition had prevented us from even briefing, much less lobbying, the leading politicians in the state about our plans as they evolved. The consequence was that we lost the opportunity to develop crucial allies and nurture goodwill.” • Revealing to the public “a plan that looked relatively complete [which] opened ourselves up to every critic with different ideas about what a park based on American history should and should not include.” • Making emotional statements that critics latched on to, including being shocked about not being taken around on people’s shoulders and complaining that history in school was boring. Eisner reflects: “My comments made me sound not just smug and arrogant but like something of a Philistine. . . . Looking back, I realize how much my brief moment of intemperance undermined our cause.” To balance his story, Eisner also recollects his well-meaning intentions for the theme park, describing his motives as the patriotic and socially responsible vision of a son of immigrants. He wanted visiting Disney’s America to be as multimedia intensive and deeply moving an experience as the U.S. Holocaust Museum. In retrospect, Eisner explained “We saw ourselves as storytellers first and foremost,” who needed advice from historical experts to portray American history “knowledgeably and responsibly.” Working with the advisory group of “openminded” historians who critiqued comparable exhibits in Orlando was particularly eye-opening: “In our original plan, for example, we’d envisioned recreating a classic twentieth-century steel. mill and then putting a roller-coaster through it. To do that, we began to understand, could trivialize and even demean the attempt to portray the steel mill realistically.” Of his critics, Eisner complains, “By any reasonable measure, this attack on Disney’s America was dramatically overstated. . . . Much like negative advertising in a political campaign, [their] incendiary claims were effective in influencing public opinion and putting us further on the defensive. I was suddenly the captain of Exxon’s Valdez. . . . By the summer of 1994, opposing Disney’s America had become a fashionable cause célèbre in the media centers of New York City and Washington, D.C. . . . Fairness seemed to have given way to polemics.” In the end, Eisner explains that financial projections made in late August 1994 “showed that rather than the profit we’d previously projected for Disney’s America, we were now facing the prospect of substantial losses.” On the cost side, Eisner attributed the losses to the current and future expense of dealing with opponents’ legal challenges, to the carrying costs caused by a projected two-year delay before breaking ground, and to the modifications to the original plans that increased costs by almost 40 percent. On the revenue side, the Disney’s America team now projected a lower price point for tickets and a shorter season at eight months down from nine. According to Eisner, “Now that a dozen members of our team had spent a year living in the towns adjacent to our site, they had a different view. An eight-month season for the park seemed more realistic.” The revised figures, coupled with the psychic impact of Wells’ death, Eisner’s by-pass surgery, and Katzenburg’s departure led to the decision to abandon plans for Disney’s America. As Eisner concludes, I still believed that it was possible to get Disney’s America built, but the question now was at what cost. . . . [A]fter two weeks of soul-searching, we finally agreed that it wasn’t fair to subject the company to more trauma. The issue was no longer who was right or wrong. We had lost the perception game. Largely through our own missteps, the Walt Disney Company had been effectively portrayed as an enemy of American history and a plunderer of sacred ground. The revised economic projections took the last bit of wind out of our sails. The cost of moving forward on Disney’s America, we reluctantly concluded, finally outweighed the potential gain. Others interpreted the situation as one in which Eisner himself needed better handling. In The Keys to the Kingdom, former Washington Post reporter Kim Masters says Eisner’s dealings with the media had suffered since late 1992 when he lost his chief of corporate communications, Erwin Okun, to cancer. “Okun had a shrewd yet avuncular style that worked well with the press,” wrote Masters. Journalist Peter Boyer said of Okun “‘He somehow pushed that button in all of us that said Disney is an honest, good company that meant well. . . . He packaged [Eisner] well without seeming to do so.’” “Eisner said he relied on Okun ‘to counsel, review, berate, encourage, and protect me,’” Masters writes. Okun’s successor, John Dreyer, however, “came from the theme parks. He lacked Okun’s cordiality and treated the press with suspicion bordering on hostility. At the Washington Post, he quickly alienated the very reporters whose coverage of Disney’s America would prove most influential.”10 Pat Scanlon, formerly an Imagineer, speculated that Wells might have salvaged the Disney’s America project. “There wasn’t anybody at a high enough level to keep Michael in his box, [Scanlon] says. “Michael was making public remarks that weren’t helpful. Michael sounded a bit like an abrasive Hollywood producer coming to town. Frank would have shaped public relations because he would have made Michael more aware. Frank was the consummate diplomat.”11 Whatever the cause, Nick Kotz, a member of the Piedmont Environmental Council and author of the editorial in the Los Angeles Times, observed this about the effects of the Disney’s America theme park controversy: “Undoubtedly Disney had internal reasons for the decision to strike its tent on the Piedmont battlefield. But it had also faced the danger of a Pyrrhic victory. In all probability, it could have prevailed and built its theme park, but it would have suffered serious and perhaps permanent value to its reputation.”12 Despite claims by Eisner and Disney officials to the contrary, as of the writing of this case, no further plans have been announced for a Disney’s America theme park.

Discuss and Anlysis the Case Study.

Two different companies have applied to provide cable television service in a certain region. Let p denote the proportion of all potential subscribers who favor the first company over the second. Consider testing H0: p = 0.5 versus Ha: p ≠ 0.5 based on a random sample of 25 individuals. Let the test statistic X be the number in the sample who favor the first company and x represent the observed value of X.

(b) Suppose that x = 5. Which other values of X are at least as contradictory to H0 as this one? (Enter your answers as a comma-separated list.)

Use it to compute the P-value when

x = 5.  (Round your answer to three decimal places.)

(d)

If H₀ is to be rejected when P-value ≤ 0.044,

compute the probability of a type II error when

p = 0.4,

again when

p = 0.3,

and also when

p = 0.6

and

p = 0.7.

[Hint:

P-value > 0.044

is equivalent to what inequalities involving x? Keep in mind that

P(type II error when p = 0.4) = P(H₀ is not rejected when p = 0.4).]

(Round your answers to three decimal places.)

p = 0.4p = 0.3p = 0.6p = 0.7

Write a hotel blog about a hotel that you visited recently. Remember that you need to write the text in perfect tense. Please write minimum 30, maximum 40 sentences. Also specify which hotel category suits your hotel.

a 15 kg rock slides down a frictionless icy hill of height h= 20.0 m, starting at the top of speed on the ground that offers kinetic v0 = 9m/s. Once it reaches the bottom (Point C) it continues horizontally on the ground that offers kinetic friction with uk=0.2. After traveling a distance = 110m to reach point D, it begins compressing a spring with spring constant 2 N/m

a. what is the speed of the rock when it reaches point C

b. How far will the rock compress the spring till it comes to a stop?

c. Once the spring is fully compressed , will the rock rebound? The coefficient of static friction between the rock and the ground is us = 0.8

Two stocks, stock A and B, are available in the stock market. The price of the stock A today is $50. The price of stock A next year will be $40 if the economy is in a recession, $55 if the economy is normal, and $60 if the economy is expanding. The probabilities of recession, normal times, and expansion are 0.1, 0.8, and 0.1, respectively. Stock A pays no dividends and has a correlation of 0.8 with the market portfolio. Stock B has an expected return of 9 percent, a standard deviation of 12 percent, a correlation with the market portfolio of 0.2 and a correlation with stock A of 0.6. The market portfolio has a standard deviation of 10 percent. Assume CAPM holds.

Required:

1. If you are a typical risk-averse investor with a well-diversified portfolio which stock would you prefer? Why?

2. What are the expected return and standard deviation of a portfolio consisting of 70 percent of stock A and 30 percent of stock B?

3. What are your considerations if you would like to include additional stocks in your investment portfolio? Explain briefly.

4. You believe that stock market is efficient, and investors are not able to generate abnormal return from the market. Explain your possible strategies based on your belief.

Between 1988 and 1990 three $150 million amusement parks opened in France. By 1991 two of them were bankrupt and the third was doing poorly. Despite this, the Walt Disney Company went ahead with a plan to open Europe’s first Disneyland in 1992. Far from being concerned about the theme park doing well, Disney executives were worried that Euro Disneyland would be too small to handle the giant crowds. The $4.4 billion project was to be located on 5,000 acres in Seine-et-Marne 20 miles east of Paris. And the city seemed to be an excellent location; there were 17 million people within a two-hour drive of Euro Disneyland, 41 million within a four-hour drive, and 109 million within six hours of the park. This included people from seven countries: France, Switzerland, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Britain. Disney officials were optimistic about the project. Their US parks, Disneyland and Disneyworld, were extremely successful, and Tokyo Disneyland was so popular that on some days it could not accommodate the large number of visitors. Simply put, the company was making a great deal of money from its parks. However, the Tokyo park was franchised to others—and Disney management felt that it had given up too much profit with this arrangement. This would not be the case at Euro Disneyland. The company’s share of the venture was to be 49 per cent for which it would put up $160 million. Other investors put in $1.2 billion, the French government provided a low-interest $900 million loan, banks loaned the business $1.6 billion, and the remaining $400 million was to come from special partnerships formed to buy properties and to lease them back. For its investment and management of the operation, the Walt Disney Company was to receive 10 per cent of Euro Disney’s admission fees, 5 per cent of food and merchandise revenues, and 49 per cent of all profits. The location of the amusement park was thoroughly researched. The number of people who could be attracted to various locations throughout Europe and the amount of money they were likely to spend during a visit to the park were carefully calculated. In the end, France and Spain had proved to offer the best locations. Both countries were well aware of the park’s capability for creating jobs and stimulating their economy. As a result, each actively wooed the company. In addition to offering a central location in the heart of Europe, France was prepared to provide considerable financial incentives. Among other things, the French government promised to build a train line to connect the amusement park to the European train system. Thus, after carefully comparing the advantages offered by both countries, France was chosen as the site for the park. At first things appeared to be off to a roaring start. Unfortunately, by the time the park was ready to open, a number of problems had developed, and some of these had a very dampening effect on early operations. One was the concern of some French people that Euro Disney was nothing more than a transplanting of Disneyland into Europe. In their view the park did not fit into the local culture, and some of the French press accused Disney of “cultural imperialism.” Others objected to the fact that the French government, as promised in the contract, had expropriated the necessary land and sold it without profit to the Euro Disneyland development people. Signs reading “Don’t gnaw away our national wealth” and “Disney go home” began appearing along roadways. These negative feelings may well have accounted for the fact that on opening day only 50,000 visitors showed up, in contrast to the 500,000 that were expected. Soon thereafter, operations at the park came under criticism from both visitors and employees. Many visitors were upset about the high prices. In the case of British tourists, for example, because of the Franc exchange rate, it was cheaper for them to go to Florida than to Euro Disney. In the case of employees, many of them objected to the pay rates and the working conditions. They also raised concerns about a variety of company policies ranging from personal grooming to having to speak English in meetings, even if most people in attendance spoke French. Within the first month 3,000 employees quit. Some of the other operating problems were a result of Disney’s previous experiences. In the United States, for example, liquor was not sold outside of the hotels or specific areas. The general park was kept alcohol free, including the restaurants, in order to maintain a family atmosphere. In Japan, this policy was accepted and worked very well. However, Europeans were used to having outings with alcoholic beverages. As a result of these types of problems, Euro Disney soon ran into financial problems. In 1994, after three years of heavy losses, the operation was in such bad shape that some people were predicting that the park would close. However, a variety of developments saved the operation. For one thing, a major investor purchased 24.6 per cent (reducing Disney’s share to 39 per cent) of the company, injecting $500 million of much needed cash. Additionally, Disney waived its royalty fees and worked out a new loan repayment plan with the banks, and new shares were issued. These measures allowed Euro Disney to buy time while it restructured its marketing and general policies to fit the European market. In October 1994, Euro Disney officially changed its name to “Disneyland Paris.” This made the park more French and permitted it to capitalize on the romanticism that the word “Paris” conveys. Most importantly, the new name allowed for a new beginning, disassociating the park from the failure of Euro Disney. This was accompanied with measures designed to remedy past failures. The park changed its most offensive labor rules, reduced prices, and began being more culturally conscious. Among other things, alcohol beverages were now allowed to be served just about anywhere. The company also began making the park more appealing to local visitors by giving it a “European” focus. Ninety-two per cent of the park’s visitors are from eight nearby European countries. Disney Tomorrowland, with its dated images of the space age, was jettisoned entirely and replaced by a gleaming brass and wood complex called Discovery land, which was based on themes of Jules Verne and Leonardo da Vinci. In Disneyland food services were designed to reflect the fable’s country of origin: Pinocchio’s facility served German food, Cinderella’s had French offerings, and at Bella Notte’s the cuisine was Italian. The company also shot a 360-degree movie about French culture and showed it in the “Visionarium” exhibit. These changes were designed to draw more visitors, and they seemed to have worked. Disneyland Paris reported a slight profit in 1996, and the park continued to make a modest profit through to the early 2000s. In 2002 and 2003, the company was once again making losses, and new deals had to be worked out with creditors. This time, however, it wasn’t insensitivity to local customs but a slump in the travel and tourism industry, strikes and stoppages in France, and an economic downturn in many of the surrounding markets.

1. What is Walt Disney Company shown as multinational enterprises (MNE) characteristics?
2. Disney instead of licensing some other firm to build and operate the park and settling for a royalty, it takes wholly ownership strategy in the firm, why?
3. Are Walt Disney and Euro Disney indicate the same strategy of MNE?
4. Before going ahead with Euro Disney, was there an external environmental analysis from Disney? Clarify.
5. total answer must be 800 words

Write the function letter_frequencies(text) that returns a dictionary containing all of the letter frequencies of all letters occurring in the parameter text.

For example:

if __name__ == '__main__':

    d = letter_frequencies('hello, world')
    print(d) # show the contents of this dictionary

will produce the following output:

    {'a': 0.0, 'b': 0.0, 'c': 0.0, 'd': 0.1, 'e': 0.1, 'f': 0.0, 'g': 0.0, 
    'h': 0.1, 'i': 0.0, 'j': 0.0, 'k': 0.0, 'l': 0.3, 'm': 0.0, 'n': 0.0, 
    'o': 0.2, 'p': 0.0, 'q': 0.0,'r': 0.1, 's': 0.0, 't': 0.0, 'u': 0.0, 
    'v': 0.0,'w': 0.1, 'x': 0.0, 'y': 0.0, 'z': 0.0}