Evaluation Of The Video Discussion

“When the simulation began, we felt confident in our team’s vision, goals, and strategic plan. After the first rollover, we quickly became aware that the success of a company relies heavily on the dynamics of the market. The strategic decisions of competitors weigh heavily on the overall direction of a company. Our original plan quickly became obsolete in the tumultuous bike industry, and we were forced to re-evaluate our competitive positioning. To this end, we learned

The first strategy attempted by the group involved timing trades based on daily market performance and expectations. Based on our predictions, shares were bought during the early hours of trading and by mid-day, the group had a good idea what would be kept until the next day of trading and what would be sold by close. This strategy made use of daily market news and reports to help predict short term changes; little attention was paid to long term potential as the group felt the timeframe the simulation take place in was too short. This strategy, while mildly successful, was not earning large enough gains for the group's portfolio. Many of our gains would be negated by the commission the simulator charged per trade. This strategy later evolved to include larger equity purchases on Fridays before the market closed for the weekend. These

Marketplace Business Simulator is an on-line marketing simulation that incorporates all the marketing principles I have learned over the course of this semester and apply them into real world marketing practice. Simulation was used for the sake of instigating effective results and in that regard, this paper analyses the manner in which each quarter was carried through. The circumstances surrounding each of the decisions made are analyzed intricately and hence a manifestation of the impact of each for each of the quarters is laid bare.

Individually or with team members, please respond to the following questions by reflecting upon the learnings from the video and the readings.

The strategy I chose for the simulation is “Niche Cost Leader." First, with the key focus being value, this strategy will challenge me to keep costs at a minimum and force me to streamline overall costs to produce a valuable commodity that, in turn, will generate financial success that can be shared with internal and external stakeholders. Second, as the success of this strategy primarily relies on the existing product line being prosperous, I will be able to practice and hone my forecasting skills based on one product. Though I eventually will produce more than one product, most of the simulation will be conducting under making the primary product as successful as it can be, and reliable forecasts are

It may be possible to even reduce your sales price in attempt to gain more customers and earn more market share. The cost of changing from a differentiation strategy to a cost leader strategy always has its unique risks. This risk is worth taking.

Throughout the performance of the different quarters, it was an up and down process. When first starting out we had little knowledge of what was going on during the first quarter simulation. However, as time progressed we became better at understanding the numbers and our sales. Our first objective was to pick a well-rounded target segment where we could make brands based on their needs. We choose the “Workhorse” segment as our first target segment. We created our first brand, which, was the “Mosaic Tech 1”. We priced it at about $2500 with a rebate of 799. The reason for the high rebate was because of the misunderstanding of what the rebate was and why it customer’s wanted a lower rebate. From there we created a brand that would sell fairly poor with our target segment. This gave our competitors an upper hand in the market at the time. Mosaic Tech computer (the first model) sold only 516 units. This only generated for about 980,400 of sales revenue. We lost 616,393 due to the cost of goods sold. This resulted in us having a gross margin of 338,207. We lost more money than we made in the first quarter.

At the end of the first round of the simulation, team Baldwin had a return on sales (ROS) of -0.1% which is far below the minimum 10% that is required for a profitable organization. In this round, the contribution margin percentage was 26.1 and the net margin percentage was 6.7%. Both margins were below the 30% and 20% respective minimum. This could have been as a result of the company's products contributing differently to the income statement by producing varying margins ADDIN EN.CITE Sitomer2010289(Sitomer, 2010)2892896Sitomer, A.The Capsim Capstone Simulation: A Student's Perspective2010Ventura, CaliforniaSteven A. Pate9780982968703http://books.google.co.ke/books?id=Goq4cQAACAAJ( HYPERLINK l "_ENREF_5" o "Sitomer, 2010 #289" Sitomer, 2010). The company had an overall market share of 20.52% which represented its strength in the industry. At this point, the company was strategizing to add a new product to their low market segment portfolio which was expected to help the company increase market share and to increase sales volume. The company failed terribly in keeping stock prices high. This is because at the end of the first round, the company stock had lost $9.69 to close at $24.57. The company was utilizing over 100% of its production capacity which meant that the company was trying to maximize utilization. The company had emergency loans of over $16 million. The company had a stock out of its Bead product as a result of

Dr. Gray's presentation of the Uses (and Misuses) of the University Today (2009) was incredibly informative. It was very interesting to see a leader, a female leader, in education, who has been a professional within education across the time period we are to focus upon in the paper. She is a former university president, among other accolades, and she has gained some wisdom to share as we progress with great speed onward into the 21st century. The misuse of the university system that stood out the most to this viewer is the pressure of federal funding for universities, and the sacrifices that come with access to federal funding.

Penetration Pricing Penetration pricing is the strategy of entering the market with a low initial price so that a greater share of the market can be captured. The penetration strategy is used when an elite market does not exist and demand seems to be elastic over the entire demand curve, even during early stages of product introduction. High price elasticity of demand is probably the most important reason for adopting a penetration strategy. The penetration strategy is also used to discourage competitors from entering the market. When competitors seem to be encroaching on a market, an attempt is made to lure them away by means of penetration pricing, which yields lower margins. A competitor’s costs play a decisive role in this pricing strategy because a cost advantage over the existing manufacturer might persuade another firm to enter the market, regardless of how low the margin of the former may be. One may also turn to a penetration strategy with a view to achieving economies of scale. Savings in production costs alone may not be an important factor in setting low prices because, in the absence of price elasticity, it is difficult to generate sufficient sales. Finally, before adopting penetration pricing, one must make sure that the product fits the lifestyles of the mass market. For example, although it might not be difficult for people to accept imitation milk, cereals made from petroleum products would probably have difficulty in becoming popular. How low the

Overall, I feel I improved from the first video session. I seemed more comfortable on camera. In addition, I felt that I let the client talk a lot more in this session. I remained silent for most of the session, speaking when I felt necessary. At the end of the session, my client’s response was cut off, for next session I will try to make sure to not stop the tape before the client responds.

A reasonable profit was made and utilization of the resources was at high levels. During the next part of the simulation I decided to buy two of the new ovens and the Menu Point customer system, this increased profits but as the simulation states the two ovens were unnecessary. Looking at this from a purely profit and loss standpoint I made the right choices by buying the new units and installing the customer service system Menu Point. These are very big changes and the learning curve will be steep but the turnaround should keep the learning curve to a relatively low spike as the new equipment will basically only change the timing for the items to be prepared and delivered as continual training takes place.

In the initial test market, we took a conservative approach in building brand and market share. This did not yield the expected results.

Introduction Pricing is an important strategic issue because it is related to product positioning. There are many ways to price a product, eg. price skimming, penetration pricing, etc. Price skimming is a pricing strategy in which a marketer sets a relatively high price for a product or service at first, and then lowers the price over time where a new, innovative, or much-improved product is launched onto a market. The objective with skimming is to “skim” off customers who are willing to pay more to have the product sooner; prices are lowered later when demand from the “early adopters” falls. The success of a price-skimming strategy is largely dependent on the inelasticity of demand for the product either by the market as a whole, or by

When discussing about whether a firm can generate profit in the long run by differentiating its product in the market, it simply boils down to the type of market in which it operates. For instance, producers of everyday items such as grocery items can earn regular income in short run without having to increase their cost of production on advertising as a result of homogeneity of the products. However, due to the presence of close substitutions, producers might have to lower their prices to keep their products competitive in the market. Moreover, firms in competitive markets concede the ability to set prices solely to the market forces (demand and supply). So, as they try to undercut rivals for profit, their attempts backfires as the rivals match their prices promptly (Bourdon, 1992).