A Case Study of Cirque Du Soleil

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Abstract Cirque du Soleil, a circus that create a new era in its industry. Founded in mid 1980s, within less than 30 years, it has over 5,000 employees worldwide, including more than 1,000 artists. This paper is written to first discuss the strategy that Cirque takes in order to create its value and achieve a competitive advantage and further becoming the pioneer in the industry. Secondly, to illustrate how the strategy determines the role behaviors Cirque employees must demonstrate. Finally, describe and analyze Cirque du Soleil’s unique recruitment and selection process and consider which of its practices are transferable to other service industries. When it comes to new circus, most of people will answer it’s the Cirque du Soleil, describe and discuss the reasons and strategies it takes in redefining this industry. What strategy does Cirque use to create value and achieve a competitive advantage? Cirque du Soleil, founded in mid 1980s, is a hybrid of circus, acrobatics, and dance performance (Berry, Shankar, Parish, Cadwallader, & Dotzel, 2006 as cited in Ghazzawi, Martinelli-Lee & Palladini, 2014). In less than 30 years, the company had over 5,000 employees worldwide, including more than 1,000 artists, and redefined the circus industry (Hoovers, 2013 as cited in Ghazzawi et al., 2014). One of the key factors for its success is that Cirque is able to simultaneously pursuit of both differentiation and low cost by hiring performers instead of animals and to do the performance in a ring instead of three (Anne-Marie, Rivard, & Talbot, 2011). Hiring animals is costly in terms of feeding, transportation, sheltering, keeping them in good health condition along with the cost of its trainers. In addition, it is un-predictable of an animal’s condition such as emotion or illness. The idea of a circus without animals causes people’s attention immediately. The

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