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Marketing Principles Simulation

MarketShare

MarketShare is an intermediate level marketing principles simulation where students learn to create, communicate and deliver value to customers.

Overview

MarketShare is based on our leading marketing management simulation PharmaSim, but simplified for use in a marketing principles or intermediate marketing level class for undergraduates. Students become a member of the marketing management team for a pharmaceutical company. They are exposed to and must wrestle with concepts such as understanding market segmentation, multiple channels, intermediaries, and promotional content. They will also reformulate an existing product, as well as launch a new product.

The Case

Students take the role of a brand management team in the over-the-counter pharmaceutical industry for up to 6 simulated years. Students can work in teams of 2 to 4 students or individually. As a member of their marketing management group, students manage the marketing mix for their products and make product decisions such as, reformulating their existing brand and launching a new product. MarketShare is modeled from an OTC brand management perspective, but the issues raised apply to marketers in any industry. Out of five competitors in the market, their company is at the bottom in terms of sales. But management believes their brand should drive future growth and profitability for the company--so the pressure is on! The task of the Allround brand management team is to increase market share and profitability in a competitive and changing environment.

To read the full copy of the case for the simulation, request a Faculty ID here!

MarketShare also comes with 6 "incidents" (mini-cases) that challenge students to wrestle with various behavioral elements of their business. These are:

• Social Media (Advertising) Students choose to create a website with a blog, a Facebook and Twitter account, or any one of these options with 5% of the ad budget going towards Google Adwords.
  
• Targeted Advertising (Advertising, Segmentation) Provides the students the option to target their consumers based on demographic data.
• Employee Over-Sharing (Ethics) Dealing with a personnel issue of an employee's personal blog that talks about your company in a less-than-flattering manner.
• Volume Discount (Pricing) An opportunity to discuss offering high-volume discounts (or not) and what effects it might have.
• Product Tampering (Product, Public Relations) A bottle of Allround is suspected to have been linked to some poisonings in a metropolitan area. This is a PR issue but also involves issues of operations and how that will affect the company.
• Sales Force Management (Sales force) One of Allround's salespeople wants to redefine her sales territory so that the workload is more even. The salesperson with the adjoining territory (who is doing better than she is) does not agree. Students must decide how to manage this situation.

Objective

The main objective of MarketShare is to have all of the characteristics of a case analysis, while also placing the participant into a dynamic, simulated business environment. It also sticks with issues pertaining to the 4Ps framework. 

MarketShare is designed to help your students understand:

• Marketing Research: the different types of research and what type is best
• Consumer Behavior:  the decision-making process and influences
• Competitor Analysis: differentiating brands, using research to accomplish this
• Features, Benefits, & Value Proposition: the differences between these and how to highlight each to sell more product
• Break-Even Analysis: connecting the marketing process to accounting information
• Gross Margin Analysis: focus on the intersection of pricing and distribution concepts
• Retail Store Visits: getting a full picture of what buyers see when making a decision
• Advertising Storyboard: identifying key elements such as the target audience, the message, budget objectives, ad design, pre-testing, choosing media, establishing a schedule, and evaluating the ad

Performance Measures

With MarketShare, instructors have a comprehensive set of metrics (28 in total) to judge team performance. For full access to all performance measures, request a Faculty ID. In general, team performance can be judged by the following:

• Stock Price
• Unit Sales
• Return on Equity, Return on Assets, Return on Marketing
• Earnings Per Share
• Cumulative Net Income
• Market Share
• Return on Sales
• Capacity Utilization

Any of the 28 measures areas can be weighted and combined by the instructor to form an overall score to evaluate how their teams perform.

If you are an instructor and would like to review MarketShare for your class, please fill out our Faculty ID Request!