Case Analysis on Cirque Du Soleil

Cirque Du Soleil started their journey with a dream to entertain people through live shows. They
bring uniqueness in the circus, and their uniqueness and innovative ideas differentiate them from
others till now even. Guy Laliberte, Gilles Saint-Croix, and Daniel Gauthier founded this new
style circus company and they did their first show in 1984 during the 450th Anniversary
celebrations of Jacques Cartier’s landing in Canada. They started their journey with a simple
vision and goal and that is to entertain people of all kinds through live performance.

Mission:

The mission of Cirque Du Soleil is, “To invoke the imagination, provoke the senses and evoke
the emotions of people around the world.”

Core Values:

 To uphold the integrity of our creative process;

 To recognize and respect each individual’s contribution to our body of work;
 To extend the limits of the possible;
 To draw our inspiration from artistic and cultural diversities;
 To encourage and promote the potential of youth.

The Things We Are Looking at-

 Does Cirque Du Soleil have competitive advantages over others?

 Do they need the mega complex?
 How they can remain market leader in future?

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Sustainable Competitive Advantage

Cost Leadership VS. Differentiator

From the case we can say that Cirque Du Soleil positioned themselves as a differentiator in the
market. They have all the attributes of being as differentiator, such as-

1. Higher price
2. Innovative features
3. Excellent service
4. Snob appeal

Cirque Du Soleil

Differentiator
(Cirque Du Soleil)
Average Market
Price

Differentiator Average Market

(Cirque Du Soleil) Price

They have much higher prices than the others in the circus industry, but still because of their
ideas, their innovations give them the edge and remain in the market as the differentiator. So they
should keep working on the quality and bringing new ideas in their core service, so that people
can always identify the value for money.

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Market Scope:

Niche

Mixed Broad

These are three different market scopes. However, Cirque Du Soleil spread their entertainment
business in broad market; it’s all over the globe. They have offices in different regions, and they
already did 19 shows in over 271 countries. But the problem is they are not specialized in most
of the market.

Generic Competitive Positioning:

Cost Leadership Cost/ Niche Cost/ Broad

Diff/ Broad
Differentiation Diff/ Niche (Cirque Du
Soleil)

Though they have differentiated market in the industry,

Niche and they gain the competitive advantage
Broad
through differentiation and innovative and quality ideas, apart from that they also spread their

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shows all over the world. They choose the whole world as their market scope. So they are
actually providing differentiated experience in a broad market, and they are doing it in a nice
manner.

Homogenous Market Heterogeneous market with

Broad positive synergies between
(Cirque Du Soleil)
segments
Heterogeneous market with Heterogeneous market with
negative synergies between negative synergies between
Focused segments groups of segments and
positive synergies within
groups.

One Several

As we can see they have broad homogenous market in the world. They have wide coverage;
doing live performance all over the world, and with only one product offerings and which is live
entertainment or circus. It’s a good way to be efficient on the product offering, but we think they
should consider different market segments. We can understand all the people around the world
like shows of Cirque Du Soleil, but they should bring variations to attract the same customer
attending their show again and again.

VRIN Framework:

Resources Valuable Rare Inimitable Non-

substitutable
Brand Y Y Y Y
Artist Y Y Y Y
Headquarter Y Y N Y
Premise
Instruments Y N N N
Management Y N N N
Website Y N N N
Experience Y Y N N
X-Factors:
The X-factors of Cirque Du Soleil are shown in graph below:

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X-factors

Efficient
Frontier

Infrastructure
Affiliation with Government
Global Citizenship
Brand
Creativity & Innovative ideas

Minimal Differetiation
Uncompromised Quality
Employee Engagement
Decentralized Authority
Make-up & Costumes
Theme

Although from the VRIN Framework we found that most of the resources won’t have the
competitive advantage because of not being rare or many of them got imitable by the
competitors. But they have several X-factors which ensure the superior performance of Cirque
Du Soleil and keep them market leader in the industry. But the challenge is they need to maintain
it and they need to come up with new things to maintain it.

Recommendations for Cirque Du Soleil:

 Opening up a Circus School:

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The idea of opening up a school will help to tackle the high turnover rate. Also through
this they can monitor all the students over there and can train them according to their
needs from their early life. However, Laliberte said the planet is full of talents, but the
fact is competition is raising and their competitors are also exploiting these artists from
all over the world, so they need to be prepared from now on, so that they can tackle the
situations later on.
 No Need of Creating Mega Complex:
After analyzing the case we figured that they differentiated themselves at lot high scale
from their competitors. Their competitors are copying them and they might become a
threat in the long future, but at this moment the position Cirque Du Soleil has, is very
strong and they don’t need any major investment like this, which is also against their
vision.
 Opening up a New Research Institute:
However the idea of Cirque Du Soleil is always innovative, but competitors are copying
it and showing it as well. So they should always need to come up with new ideas
frequently, so that customers feel the difference. Also millions of people already watched
their shows by now, and to bring them back again to the show, they need to show them
different acts and they will find different value at different time. With the help of research
institute they can become specialized in the broad market as well.
 Using Saltimbanco as Star Product, not Discontinued:
Though Saltimbanco is a 10 year old show and the oldest one, but the demand for the
show is still growing and it remains as huge source of earning revenue. So they should
not discontinue it, besides they can perform this show along with their new shows in the
event.

(Total Words: 988 out of 1000.)

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