D. Corporate Level Strategy-

Six Flags competes head on with all of the other amusement parks, like Disney, Universal and Cedar Fair to name a few. Almost everyone in the world knows about Disney and its parks Disney World and Disney Land, which makes them the leader in market share at 36.2% (IBISWorld, 2013). Six Flags has 8.2% of the market share (IBISWorld, 2013). Six Flags has eighteen parks located in North America that span across three countries (Flags, 2013). Being in the United States that automatically makes Disney World & Land an instant major competitor along with Universal, SeaWorld, and Cedar Fair. They compete head on with them by trying to acquire park goers from all of these companies. They do this by having their parks strategically placed across the United States in locations that would attract customers. They have parks in eleven major cities in the United States and also have two parks in Mexico City, Mexico and in Montreal, Canada (Flags, 2013). In Mexico City Six Flags only has to compete with two other parks that are not owned by the their major competitors (Wikipedia, 2011). Six Flags is the only major amusement park that is located in Montreal giving them a major advantage in Canada. With Six Flags having overall more parks than their major competitors gives them a major strategic advantage. Having more parks than your competitors gives you the opportunity to attract more customers just because you have more options in more cities making you more accessible to your target market. Another advantage that Six Flags has is the different specialty rides that can only be ridden at one of their parks. Six Flags also have an exclusive license on certain Warner Bros. and DC Comics characters which include Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Batman, and Superman just to name a few. This gives them an advantage because they can capture all of the fans of these characters and sway their purchase decisions to purchase a Six Flags ticket say over a Disney ticket. Six Flags also have certain rights on Hanna-Barbera and Cartoon Network characters like Scooby-Doo helping them get a strong hold on the classic cartoon market. Six Flags has dedicated itself to setting the standard for theme park entertainment (Flags, 2013). Being dedicated to setting the standard for theme park entertainment means that Six Flags is willing and wants to grow their business by making sure their guests gets the best experience out of their trip to one of Six Flags parks. Six Flags adds new rides and attractions every year making trips there a refreshing one by offering new things even for the people who travel to one of their parks every year. Six Flags must add new thrill rides while also making sure they do not forget the people who are not a fan of rollercoasters. Adding new attractions is just as important as opening a new rollercoaster. Both take an enormous amount of time to implement, which shows that Six Flags is continuously thinking of new things that could be improved at the parks. Six Flags uses a few different corporate strategies to stay in business and attract new customers. They use two different types of concentration strategy. The first being product development because whenever they open a new ride or attraction they are selling a new product for them in the same market. The second concentration strategy Six Flags uses is market penetration. Six Flags is always trying to sell more tickets to new customers and previous customers. They just have to make sure that they have a park that is worth coming back to in their customers eyes. Six Flags also takes part in different alliances that include Warner Bros., DC Comics, and Hanna-Barbera (Flags, 2013). Six Flags went through chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2009 and had to pay $300 million to its preferred shareholders. This means that they had to go through a retrenchment strategy to get out of bankruptcy. Six Flags operates as a Strategic Business Unit. With Six Flags having eighteen parks all of the parks must report to their corporate staff as a middleman between them and the CEO of the company. Each park has their main manager who reports to the corporate staff, but within that park there are many different departments that help the company run as smoothly as possible (MarketLine, 2012). The marketing department is in charge of coming up with the marketing strategy for that individual park that would have to be approved before use. Accounting is responsible for keeping track of the finances of the particular park. The in park services department makes sure that all of the services in the park like food and drink vendors, and trash keeping are doing what they are suppose to be doing and keeping visitors to the park as happy as they can possible be. Park operations is the department that is in charge of making sure that all the rides and attractions are running correctly and are not having any problems with them. That involves checking all of the ridings making sure the run properly in the morning before the park opens (Flags, 2013).

Each department has to report to the manager and tell him how each of them are meeting their goals and making their park successful. Once the manager of the park gets this information he will report it to Six Flags corporate staff, which in turn will relay that information to the CEO. The CEO then will take that information and compile it to make a report to the directors of the Six Flags so they can come up with what the company should do next to stay a step ahead of the game. Six Flags must operate as a Strategic Business Unit because of the numerous parks that they having running at once making it extremely difficult to run as any other kind of structure. If the corporate staff was not there to help filter information for the CEO he would be completely overwhelmed with the amount of people that would be taking with him on a day to day basis. Being set up as a Strategic Business Unit frees up the CEO to look at the future for Six Flags and future plans to keep them fresh and relevant which is what he is responsible for.E. Business Level Strategies-The primary line of Six Flags is the Amusement & Theme Park industry. Six Flags business level strategy is being a niche differentiator. Six Flags competes as a niche differentiation company because they do not have the major market share of the industry being at 8.2%. Being one of the smaller major companies in the industry Six Flags must make themselves stick out to customers making them see them as something different and unique. Six Flags manages to differentiate themselves from Disney and Universal by being the only amusement park that offers the experience of meeting your favorite Warner Bros characters like Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, and Foghorn Leghorn. Also they differentiate from Disney and Universal by having exclusive rights to use superheroes like Superman and Batman. Like all companies Six Flags uses the four Ps of marketing, price, place, product, and promotion. Price-Six Flags offers mainly two different ways to buy tickets; either buy them at the park or buy a season pass. Based on the park Six Flags over Georgia the ticket prices at the park for general admission is $56.99 and they offer specials for children shorter than 48 inches at $39.99 and children under the age of two is free admission. For a season pass Six Flags offers a variety of different level packages you can get with your season pass. A basic admissions season pass costs $56.99 with the price going up with the higher package you buy (Flags, 2013). Place- Six Flags have parks in eighteen locations in major cities. They have parks all the way in New York, Texas, and California. Six Flags has also ventured outside of the United States and built parks in Canada and Mexico (Flags, 2013). Product- Six Flags product is the amusement parks themselves. They are in a service industry more than anything. The only physical product that Six Flags sells would be the food and drinks that are sold at the restaurants and food stands in the park. Their main product is the parks and rides which means that they are providing entertainment for their customers more than a product that you can put your hands on. Promotion-Six Flags offers different specials through out the year to try and attract different customers who may be price sensitive but not time sensitive. They offer discounts for purchasing your tickets online, and they also offer what they call a Flash Pass which allows a customer to hold their place is ride lines electronically allowing them to get around to more attractions faster (Flags, 2013). Target Market-Six Flags target market is mainly families that are going on vacation and thrill seekers who come to ride their roller coasters. They reach their main target market of families going on vacation by offering specials on tickets when you purchase more than four. They reach their secondary market by offer the special like the Flash Pass.

Resources:

1) IBISWorld. (2013). Amusement parks major competitors. Retrieved from http://clients1.ibisworld.com/reports/us/industry/majorcompanies.aspx?entid=1646 2) Wikipedia. (2011). Amusement parks in mexico city. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Amusement_parks_in_Mexico_City3) Flags, S. (2013). Six flags overview. Retrieved from http://investors.sixflags.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=61629&p=irol-IRHome4) Flags, S. (2013). Six flags invertor relations. Retrieved from http://investors.sixflags.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=61629&p=irol-homeprofile5) MarketLine. (2012). Six flags entertainment company. Retrieved from http://advantage.marketline.com.jproxy.lib.ecu.edu/Product?pid=A0CA1B2A-10C5-4D46-BF56-18802B969F0E6) Flags, S. (2013). Tickets: Six flags over georgia. Retrieved from http://www.sixflags.com/overGeorgia/tickets/index.aspx7) Flags, S. (2013). Six flags special offers. Retrieved from http://www.sixflags.com/national/promotions/partnermarketplace.aspx