Essay Grade

MKT-607
Marketing Management: The Marketplace Simulation
Your instructor will assign teams. Go to www.marketplace6.com, click on “sign in as student.” Enter
the license number that your instructor has e-mailed you and follow the prompts to register for your
game/simulation. Be sure to create an account in the Marketplace Live:Advanced Strategic Marketing
simulation version.
To underscore the focus of this course, a realistic strategy exercise filled with tactical detail will allow
students to experience the marketing process. Through computer simulation, this assignment will place
you into a very realistic international business setting where you will run a marketing division for 2
years in compressed time (8 rounds of decision making, representing 8 quarters).
Learning Objectives
The Marketplace Live simulation is a transformational experience. You will learn what it will be like
to compete in the fast-paced, competitive market where customers are demanding and the competition
is working hard to take away your business.
In Marketplace Live, you start up and run your own marketing division, struggling with marketing
fundamentals and the interplay between product, price, place, promotion, budgets, and financial
performance. You are given control of a simulated business and must manage its operations through
several decision cycles. Repeatedly, you must analyze the situation, plan a marketing strategy to
improve it, select the tactical options to implement that strategy, and then execute the strategy and
tactics out into the future. You face great uncertainty from the outside environment and from your own
decisions. Incrementally, you learn to skillfully adjust your strategy as you discover the nature of your
real-life decisions, including the available options, linkages to other parts of the business, conflicts,
tradeoffs, and potential outcomes.
Here is a list of what players do:
•
Analyze market research data.
•
Design brands to appeal to different market segments.
•
Devise advertising campaigns, sales force incentives, and price option.
•
Allocate scarce funds to R&D, advertising, and distribution.
•
Select and prioritize R&D projects, leading to new product features.
•
Plan and roll out a marketing campaign.
•
Manage cash.
•
Compete head-to-head with other business teams.
© 2011. Innovative Learning Solutions. All Rights Reserved.
Adapted and reprinted with permission from “Syllabus Material for Advanced Strategic Marketing,” from Marketplace
Live: Advanced Strategic Marketing, by Ernest R. Cadotte.
•
Adjust strategy and tactics in response to financial performance, competitive tactics, and
customer needs.
The specific goal of the exercise is to develop your marketing management skills by giving you an
integrated perspective of the entire marketing operation. In terms of specifics, the exercise can:
•
Develop strategic planning and execution skills within a rapidly changing environment.
•
Form the connections between marketing decisions and financial performance.
•
Instill a bottom line focus and the simultaneous need to deliver customer value.
•
Internalize how important it is to use market data and competitive signals to adjust the strategic
plan and more tightly focus marketing tactics.
•
Develop teamwork across functions, opening up new communication links.
•
Promote better decision making by helping individuals see how their decisions can affect the
performance of others and the organization as a whole.
•
Facilitate learning of important marketing concepts, principles, and ways of thinking.
•
Build confidence through knowledge and experience.
Organization of the Exercise
Exhibit 1 contains a summary of the game scenario and a chronological listing of selected simulation
activities that you and a team of fellow students will encounter while competing in this exercise. Each
quarter or decision period has a dominant activity and a set of decisions that are linked to it. These
dominant activities take the team through the product and firm life cycle from introduction, to
development, to growth, to near maturity.
Each quarter’s activities not only result in new material being introduced, but also build upon the prior
content so that there is considerable repetition. Business activities such as leadership, team
management, value creation in product design, pricing, distribution and sales force management, ad
copy design, media planning, budgeting, profit analysis, and strategic planning and management are
not easily absorbed. They require repetitive exercise in order to set them into your natural thinking. For
each new decision, there is supporting material in the accompanying text and readings.
Team Effort
You will team up with two to four other students to form an entrepreneurial division of an international
electronics firm. During an 8-week period, you will take your business through the natural stages of
business growth, including emergence, development, and maturity. Along the way, you will learn to
develop and refine your marketing strategies and tactics.
Virtual Teams
The virtual firm is fast becoming a reality. In business today, you may work out of your home in
Dallas, confer with your management team in London, coordinate shipments from the factory in
Shanghai, all to service the customer in Montreal. You will use cell phones, e-mail, instant messaging,
the Internet, and video conferencing to communicate with everyone up and down the supply chain.
Each team can decide how they wish to communicate.
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To help you learn to work within a virtual organization, the Marketplace exercise will be delivered
over the Internet. In logistical terms, a common data set will be created for the team’s decisions and
stored on an Internet-accessible file server. Thus, your team will be able to work from any location
where there is a PC with an Internet connection.
Any member of the team will be able to log onto the server, review the current situation on the web,
make decisions, and then save them for the next student to work on. As members complete their areas
of responsibility, they will report the analysis and decisions to the rest of the team for consideration.
You and your team will still need to confer on your analysis, strategy, and tactics via virtual meetings.
The advantage of this Internet system is that each team member will be able to work on the most up-todate decision file so that everyone is looking at the same data set.
The file server setup will also facilitate the coaching role of the instructor. Just as you log on to
Marketplace Live, the instructor will be able to log on at any time to review the current situation with
any team or the exercise as a whole. Thus, the instructor can monitor activity and results, and adjust
the content of any team or individual coaching efforts. It is requested that if communications occur by
telephone, face-to-face, or instant messaging, minutes of the meeting be posted to the Team Forum so
that the Instructor can keep abreast of a team’s activities.
Software Demos and Signup Procedures
Three flash demos have been prepared to introduce you to the Marketplace software. Please go to
http://www.marketplace-simulation.com/sample-screens/flash-demo.php for:
1. Student’s Overview
2. Student’s Signup
3. Simulation specific demo for Marketing Live: Advanced Strategic Marketing
Please ensure that you are signing up for the correct version on this program.
Reports
Each team will deliver a written marketing plan (following Q-4 results, coincident to the Q-5
decisions) and a written Final Report to the Board of the parent company (following Q-8 results) with
summary/lessons learned.
Individual Effort vs. Group Effort
Each student must participate equally. Both the individual and the group will be graded on all
assignments. Individuals can raise one letter grade above the group effort or drop one or more letter
grades below the group grade depending upon their individual contribution to the team, as measured by
peer reviews and time invested in the game.
Peer Evaluations
A peer evaluation will be completed during the course for each person on the team. Significant
deviation in performance above or below the norm will be used to adjust individual student grades for
the activity being evaluated. That is, your grade on the Final Report to the Board and Simulation
performance could be adjusted up or down depending upon the feedback the instructor receives from
the rest of the team for each assignment.
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You Can Be Fired
It is permissible to fire a team member who is not making a substantive contribution to the success of
the team. Missed meetings (e.g., absent from meetings, not participating in conference calls, failing to
respond to e-mails or text messages, or not participating in the Team Forum, depending on the
communications protocols agreed to by the team), poor preparation, and failure to complete
assignments are all indicative of underperformance. Before a person can be fired, the team must give
the student an opportunity to correct the identified deficiencies.
In terms of protocol, the team must provide the student with a written statement of the problems
associated with the student’s work. A peer evaluation may be used in conjunction with this statement
and submitted to the instructor.
A person who is fired will be assigned to compete in another simulation where the student is
responsible for all the firm’s activities, including weekly decisions and executive briefings, and the
preparation of a Business Plan and Report to the Board. This new simulation will begin in Quarter 1
and continue through Quarter 8.
Being fired will also limit the student’s maximum potential grade for the simulation by one-and-onehalf letter grade. Specifically, points will be deducted from the student’s final point score for the
simulation assignment. Thus, if the student earned a final score of 95% (an “A”), then the adjusted
final score would be 80% (a “B-” ). The final grade would be based upon the adjusted final score.
The same conditions will be applied if a person quits a team.
Odds and Ends
Questions to the Instructor
The HELP files in the software contain all of the directions you will need to participate in the
marketing strategy simulation.
Computation of Simulation Performance
A Balanced Scorecard will be used to measure your firm’s performance. (See the assigned article,
“Using the Balanced Scorecard as a Strategic Management System” on this subject for more
information on the scorecard concept). The team’s total business performance will be based upon its
financial performance, market effectiveness, marketing performance, investments in the firm’s future,
and creation of wealth. A total score will be computed for each firm competing in Marketplace, with
the final 4 quarters making up the final score.
At the end of the exercise, each team will be ranked in the order of performance for the total score. A
letter grade can be assigned depending upon your team’s ranking and how close it is to the team(s)
above or below you. A scoring rubric will be provided.
Workload
The course requires a normal workload for any reading and lecture course. Once the simulation begins,
the work on the simulation will vary according to the activities within the exercise. During the first
quarter of play, the work is fairly light. However, it will increase each week up through the
presentation of the Marketing Plan. Students report spending 3 to 7 hours per week in the simulation
during Quarters 3 and 4. During the preparation of the Marketing Plan, each student might spend as
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much as 10 hours on the plan itself. It is not likely that an individual would gain much from the
experience by spending less than 3 hours per week in the simulation during this time period.
The majority of students report spending about 2 to 2 ½ hours in the simulation per week following
acceptance of the Marketing Plan. This reduction of time is due to familiarity with the software, game
procedures, market, and having a plan of action that requires modification rather than creation. That
said, some students spend considerably more time as they dig deeper into the data available each
quarter. There have been students who invested 10 or more hours per week throughout the simulation.
It is noteworthy that there is a very definite positive correlation between team time invested and final
Balanced Scorecard results. Note that the “time in the simulation” means time working in the practice
or decision files and does not reflect time spent analyzing data transferred to excel spreadsheets, team
meetings (conference calls, etc.), or the like.
Time Management
Time management will be vital to your success in participating in the Marketplace Live simulation.
There is more work than any one person can do. In addition, it is not wise for everyone to participate in
all aspects of the business. Too much time would be wasted. Therefore, it is necessary to divide up the
work. There are suggestions on how to divide up the responsibility in the help files within the software.
Feel free to depart from these guidelines if individual preferences, experiences, or workloads would
allow a more equitable allocation of tasks. Also, do not hesitate to reallocate responsibility if conflicts
arise or the workload is unevenly distributed.
Leadership
Consistent with the MBA program, one of the goals is to develop the leadership skills of all students.
For this reason, it is suggested that the leadership position change systematically during the course of
the semester. A new leader could be selected for each of the following time periods and activities:
1. Start-up phase of the business (up through Quarter 4).
2. Preparation of the marketing plan.
3. The growth phase of the business (Quarters 5 through 8).
4. Preparation of the Report to Executive Board.
Changing leaders is not a requirement but a suggestion. Each team can organize as they see fit.
The president should preside over each executive meeting, making sure that the discussion does not
wander from the business at hand. Each team meeting should begin with an agenda and a timetable.
Conference calls or face-to-face meetings should not last more than 2 hours. Long drawn out meetings
are not productive and raise frustration levels about not getting things done. The meeting should
conclude with a set of action items for each executive. The outcome of these actions should be
reviewed at the start of the next meeting. This may apply to synchronous Team Forums as well.
To facilitate executive meetings, each team member should prepare his/her work in advance. The
executive should know the ins and outs, problems, and tradeoffs of his/her area of responsibility. When
the executive committee meets as a whole, each executive should have a plan of action to recommend
to the team. The executive should be prepared to thoroughly discuss the options open to the company
and be flexible on the final decision of the executive team.
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Exhibit I: Decisions by Quarter
Quarter 1: Organize team to do the job.
• Focus on process of working as a team to achieve goals.
– Assess team members’ skills, personalities, and work styles.
– Set organizational and personal goals.
– Organize the work.
– Determine how to manage the organization.
– Establish leadership.
• Determine desired image of company.
– Designate a company name.
Quarter 2: Evaluate market opportunities, set up operations, and prepare for test market.
• Analyze market opportunities—evaluate segments, geographic markets, and potential competition.
• Establish corporate goals and strategic direction.
– Specify and rank order corporate goals.
– Write mission statement.
– Select target segments.
– Establish strategic direction.
• Create customer value—design initial brands for test market.
– Match components to benefits desired (Quality Function Deployment [QFD]).
• Select test markets—set up sales offices.
Quarter 3: Go to market to test strategy, and market assumptions.
• Marketing strategy—evaluate tactical options and choose marketing mix.
– Pricing and price promotions.
– Sales force management—number employed, training, and incentives.
– Advertising—ad copy design, media placement, and ad frequency.
• Market research—budget collection of information.
Quarter 4: Evaluate test market performance, revise strategy, and become a learning
organization.
• Evaluate performance.
– Financial performance—profitability analysis.
– Market performance—customer opinion of brand designs, prices, advertising, and sales force.
– Competitor tactics—segments targeted and selection of marketing tactics.
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• Revise marketing tactics as needed, and continue test marketing.
Quarter 5: Seek external funding—prepare marketing plan.
• Evaluate performance—financial, marketing, and competitive.
• Develop 2-year marketing plan (to be submitted to the instructor).
– Goals—marketing and financial.
– Marketing strategy.
– Financial strategy.
• Invest in R&D for new technology.
• Begin roll out of marketing plan.
Quarter 6: Monitor, improve, and execute.
• Evaluate performance—financial, marketing, and competitive.
• Skillfully adjust strategy.
• Marketing—make incremental changes in tactics.
– Use Activity-Based Costing (ABC) to evaluate profitability of brands and sales offices.
– Conduct demand analysis to estimate brand, price, advertising, and sales force elasticity.
– Continuously improve brand features (R&D).
Quarters 7 and 8: Monitor, improve, and execute (continue).
• Manage strategy.
• Skillfully adjust strategy to unanticipated competitive moves.
• Continuously improve brand features (R&D), pricing, promotions, and sales force.
• Adjust strategy within financial capability.
Final Quarter: Report to the Executive Board.
• Report on operations since presentation of marketing plan (submit to instructor).
– Market and financial performance.
– Departures from plan, justification.
• Present plan for the future.
•
Lessons learned.
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Outline for the Marketing Plan
The Marketing Plan should include the following components:
1. Executive Summary
2. Financial and Market Performance – Review of financial and market performance during the past
year
3. Situation/SWOT Analysis – Assessment of current situation and the market
A.
Customers
B.
Competition
C.
Company’s strengths and weaknesses
D.
Major problems/opportunities to be dealt with next year
4. Marketing Strategy for the next year in business (What will it take to get ahead or stay ahead?)
A.
Brand strategy
B.
Pricing strategy
C.
Advertising strategy
D.
Sales channel
5. Pro forma financial projections (Quarters 1 to 8). Hint: Copy the pro forma in the simulation for
Quarters 1 to 4 into Excel and then add information/data for Quarters 5 to 8.
6. Tactical plan (Quarters 1 to 8). Hint: The tactical plan should articulate in plain language what is
planned for each quarter, e.g., Q6 – open three offices, Paris, London, New York. Staff with five
each, one service and four sales personnel, with two sales staff for priority 1 and 2 target markets,
at a cost of $xx,xxx. The reader should then be able to see the cost entry on the pro forma. In
effect, every planned expenditure shown on the pro forma should have an explanation in the
tactical plan. Revenue should be tied-out: How many units, at what price, are projected? What is
cost of goods sold? The tactical plan can—in fact, should—be provided using an easy-to-read
bullet presentation.
Report to Executive Board of Corporate Headquarters
The Report to the Executive Board should include the following components:
1. Performance Review-Review your financial and market performance during the second year.
2. Marketing Strategy – Highlight the key features of the business plan that was presented to the
venture capitalists:
A.
Brand strategy
B.
Pricing strategy
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C.
Advertising strategy
D.
Sales channel
3. Assess your business strategy and performance during the second year.
A.
Compare actions taken in regards to the marketing plan.
B.
Discuss departures from the marketing plan, justification, and outcome.
C.
Review significant events that affected the company and market.
4. Assess your current situation and the market. (What are your firm’s strengths and weaknesses?)
5. Investments in the future – Summarize how you have prepared your firm to compete in the future.
6. What were the lessons learned and recommendations?
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Running head: MARKETING SIMULATION
1
Marketing Simulation: Team Microsphere
Brad Vandelune, Melissa Gowett, Isihis Herrera, Takeisha St. Hilaire, Taylor Jekel
Grand Canyon University: MKT 607
July 11, 2018
MARKETING SIMULATION
2
Marketing Simulation
Marketing Plan
A marketing plan is a comprehensive document, which outlines the marketing as well as
the advertising efforts of the company. The role of the marketing plan is for the company to set
forth clear and concise objectives for the future stability of the company’s market presence over
a specific timeframe. Additionally, the marketing plan in relation to the marketing simulation
will includes a description of the current marketing position within the company. In order to
ensure that the marketing plan is effective, there is the need to be flexible and be able to
determine the historical data, future predictions as well as be in a position of achieving the
marketing objectives (Cohen, 2005).
Reflection Analysis
Upon reflection, Microsphere has been able to use the information and resources
provided to assess business decisions and market desires in real time. The preliminary
advertising materials did not target the market Microsphere intended to target. After third quarter
results emerged, Microsphere ranked higher than the average score in the “marketing
effectiveness” category. This illustrates the potential the company has to determine the proper
course of action with the target market. Therefore although the profit margin was not as high as
other companies entering the market, the feedback supplied was evaluated and applied to the
next quarter’s decisions. In quarter four, decisions were made to focus on other factors aside
from marketing and he success was redistributed. The marketing effectiveness score decreased
by an insignificant amount, but other factors, such as financial performance, increased
substantially. The profit margin increased in the following quarter and marketing and advertising
outcomes improved.
MARKETING SIMULATION
3
Marketing Strategy
For the next year in business Microsphere will have a lot of decisions to make based on
the current success of product, price, placement, promotion and projection. These decisions will
be based on the customer demand and review, the competitors in the markets, the success of the
brands and the ability to make technological advances. To get ahead, it is important that the
company now focus on these strategies to make the best decisions possible and move other
companies out of the markets to lessen competition. Pricing and technology will have to be
revisited based on the success of each brand, and advertising needs to be market specific. There
are several other companies offering similar product, making it difficult to have complete
ownership in a market and to keep buyers from wandering.
Products
As related to the marketing simulation, the main competitors includes NuEra, Savvy
Industries as well as InnoTech. The reason why they are competitors in the marketplace is due to
their nature of offering similar products using diverged brand names. However, on matters
relating to my company, I have involved different brands offering diverged products in the
marketplaces.
Price
In relation to marketing simulation, the prices of the main competitors across all the
markets is an average of $2,400. Therefore, there is the need of coming up with a pricing
strategy, which is lower than all competitors in order to be in a position of penetrating the market
place easily.
Place
MARKETING SIMULATION
4
According to the marketing simulation the customers are located in all parts of the World
including the cities of Europe, APAC as well as NORAM. There will be the involvement of both
direct as well as indirect marketing. There will be the involvement of different sales channels,
which will enable the products to reach to the distinguished customers accordingly.
Promotion
The company will employee advertising as it main promotional tool. According to the
marketing simulation, promotion will include design ad. This will review the needs and demands
of the target market and be in a position of designing the advertising message. Additionally,
there will be the study of the competitor’s ads (Day & Day, 2010). Since the competitors
capitalize on the usage of local media, Microsphere will also embrace local media as a tool of
promoting itself. Moreover, there will be the creation of adverts as such magazines, televisions
as well as radio stations for each brand.
Projection for the next year is to continue critiquing past advertisements and improving
on them to appeal to the targeted categories. Microsphere will increase the number of
advertisements in regional and local media to a maximum of eight per brand per category per
area.
Although it seemed that the advertisements were properly created for the targeted
categories, in reality they were not successful at fulfilling that goal and in Quarter 2 it was
noticed that the advertisements created for one category, Workhorse, actually appealed to a
different category, Mercedes.
Market research assisted in the creation of the advertisements due to the inside
knowledge it provided, but the advertising team still encountered problems reaching the desired
categories, Innovator and Mercedes through quarters 2 – 4.
MARKETING SIMULATION
5
Financial Projections
In the finance department, Microsphere is making progress as profits are increasing
slowly. In the beginning there was a struggle with profits, as many products did not meet
expectations of targeted consumers and therefore profits were smaller than projected. In the
fourth quarter, profits increased to $1,380,604. Expenses were a major part of lessened profit
margin. After expenses in quarter four, profit decreased to $526, 036. In the previous quarter, our
cumulative net profit was at -$522,666, which means that costs exceed the revenue generated
from the sale of the product (Murphy, 2018). The advertising strategy was revised in order to
properly appeal to the target market of consumers. Overall, Microsphere spent a risky amount of
money in order jumpstart more of a profit margin. Part of these expenses included more
advertising, better product, and an additional location to accommodate the increasing amount of
clientele.
Miscellaneous Income and Expenses
+Other Income
-Other Expenses
– Research and Development Costs
– Set Up Costs For New Sales Offices
= Net Profit For Division
Cumulative Net Profit For Division
0
0
0
0
(88,000)
0
0
0
330,000
(450,000)
0
0
0
0
15,334
0
0
0
140,000
386,036
0
0
5,685,139
70,000
(8,510,826)
Decisions for Q6, Q7 and Q8 are difficult to determine. Microsphere is still making
adjustments as the business is run. The targeted segments change and depending on how well
sales offices run and how well product is received by the customer. Q5 decisions and Q6 success
or failure will truly determine how the rest of the quarters are run financially. All of the R & D
investments, sales office costs, labor cost, production cost, and advertising costs have consumed
all of the net profit from this company, and it will be crucial to reach peak demand in the markets
–
MARKETING SIMULATION
6
to continue to have a net cash flow. It is important to sell more units. Doubling or tripling current
standing would increase cash flow and provide more opportunity to invest more in the company
from Q6-Q8 to reach the Mercedes customer.
Tactical plan
Quarter 1
This quarter has the responsibility of defining the responsibilities of the chief executives in the
company. Since there are multiple executives in the organization, there is the need of realizing
their roles in the organization.
Quarter 2
This quarter is defined in analyzing the norms, personal goals of the executives and sales
channels of the company.
•
Sales channels: there is the need of opening two offices in London as well as NORAM in
Toronto. Both offices will cost an estimate of $330,000.
•
Marketing brands: there is the involvement of two brands including micronetix and
MicroburstX.
Quarter 3
In relation with Pro forma report basing in marketing division profitability, the profit of each
quarter. This will be important since it will enable the company to determine whether it is
making profits or losses.
•
Quarter one has a profit of -$81,000
•
Quarter two has a profit of -$538,000
•
While quarter three has a profit of -$522,666
Quarter 4
MARKETING SIMULATION
7
The budget of the new sales offices as well as R&D will be $2,258,904. The demand of the
estimated project in each quarter includes.
•
Micronetix, which have a previous demand of 500, while the projected demand is 650.
•
MicroburstX, which have a previous demand of 480, while the projected demand remains
to be 600.
Basing on the pro forma report, the marketing division profitability in each quarter includes;
•
The profits of Quarter one is -$81,000
•
The profits of Quarter two is -$538,000
•
The profit of Quarter three is -$252,900
•
The profits of Quarter four is -$136,630
In Quarter five we opened a new sales office in Quito, added on sales people for each
region, created a new laptop brand, and invested over 5 million in R &D and purchased market
research.
In quarter six we intend on using the technology to rebrand and redirect our focus back to
our Mercedes customer. Because quarter five is predicted to be a slow quarter, we need to make
sales a major focus during quarter six and check to make sure our sales people are in the right
place and that our advertising is reaching the right audience.
In quarter seven we will focus more on increasing demand and projected sales and net
worth should increase. If funds allow, we will continue to invest in more R&D and continue to
modify brands. We will also look to see if all of our sales offices are performing well and
reevaluate at that point on opening and closings.
Quarter eight will we our final quarter. This will be our last opportunity to appeal to our
targeted segments and to have a flourishing company. Investments, offices, and workers should
MARKETING SIMULATION
all be set in stone by this point and money would go directly back into these components of
business and servicing the customer to the best of our ability.
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MARKETING SIMULATION
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References
Cohen, W. A. (2005). The marketing plan. John Wiley & Sons.
Day, G. S., & Day, G. S. (2010). Market driven strategy: Processes for creating value (pp. 1018). New York: Free Press.
Mulder, F., & Voorbraak, F. (2003). A formal description of tactical plan recognition.
Information Fusion, 4(1), 47-61.
Murphy, C. (2018) How can a company have a negative gross profit margin? Investopedia.com.
Retrieved from https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/101314/what-are-main-reasons-whythere-could-be-negative-gross-profit-margin-and-what-does-it-mean.asp

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