Shanghai Great World (1917-1931)

Great World(GW) is a perennial indoor playground located at the center of Shanghai City, which is called RBD(recreation business district) in the city theories, surround by many famaous cultural establishments. It is highlights for various performances staged there in every different period since 1917, the year it opened .There were about twelve theatres in this building, which delivered dramatic performances such as Jinju(Peking Opera), Huju(Shanghai Opera), Yueju(Shaoxing Opera), Huaju(Western Style Drama), movies and non-dramatic performances such as monologue story-telling, conjuring, acrobatics, amusement ride, special exhibitions, and sports .In addition, the erotic industry and gambling also played an important role. Different kinds of performances and entertainment were juxtaposed in one place, providing different experiences for people. GW applied the special product mixture strategy. Renowned Chinese economist Yu Guangyuan concludes that the feature of GW was "overlap of big recreation and small recreation, the diversity and mutability of the recreation products."Big recreation refers to the drama, opera and movie. Small recreation refers to story-telling, acrobatics and games. So the relationship between dramatic performances and non-dramatic performances is very important in GW. Some non-dramatic performances genres featured in GW have been developed into dramatic performances genres. In its history of eighty years, GW has given birth to several Chinese traditional theatre genres such as Yueju(Shaoxing Opera), Huju(Shanghai Opera), Shanghai Dialect Comics and Puppet-shadow Theatre. Many actors and actresses had their humble start on the stages of GW on their way to stardom. This dissertation focuses on the management strategy in GW's early period , from 1917 to 1931. The first chapter introduce the form of the playground industrial in Shanghai and the foundation of GW. The second chapter discusses the GW's competition situation in that period based on Michel Porter's theory of five force (buyer/provider/competitor/substitutor/latency )competition analysis model. The third chapter describes GW's synthetic competition strategy (such as site selection, annex, purchase strategy ,etc.)to probe the reason of GW's achievement under the tough competition situation. The forth chapter analyze the production and the innovation of the performance such as theatre, storytelling, acrobatic , conjure, etc. in GW. This market behavior contributed to the competition advantage of GW. The final chapter depicts the culture character of GW in that period, which could be called the plebian moral carnival.