Frequently asked questions for NewShoes

NewShoes is an online, team-based introduction to marketing simulation in which students manage a brand of athletic shoes. Teams make decisions across the marketing mix, including product, price, promotion, and place, while competing against other teams in their class for market share and profitability.

The simulation gives students a practical way to apply core marketing concepts as they analyze results, respond to competitors, and refine their strategy over time.

NewShoes is designed specifically for Principles of Marketing and Introduction to Marketing courses. It is also a strong fit for survey-level business courses and non-majors classes where instructors want students to experience how core marketing concepts work in practice.

Because the simulation is accessible to students who are still learning marketing fundamentals, it works well as an applied learning experience early in a business curriculum.

Yes. NewShoes is set in the athletic shoe industry, which gives students a familiar and engaging context for marketing decisions. However, the learning objectives are not limited to footwear. Students practice broadly transferable marketing concepts such as segmentation, pricing, promotion, product development, distribution, positioning, and competitive analysis.

Students manage a company that sells a basic athletic shoe in a competitive marketplace. Each team begins from the same starting position, so no team has an initial competitive advantage. Teams must analyze the company’s situation, make better decisions than competitors, and improve performance over time.

Yes. All teams begin from the same competitive position. This makes the experience fair and helps students see that performance is driven by the quality of their decisions, their analysis, and their ability to adjust over time.

A traditional case asks students to analyze a situation and recommend a course of action. NewShoes asks students to act, see results, and adapt. Because the marketplace changes over time and teams compete directly with one another, students experience how marketing decisions interact across price, promotion, product development, distribution, customer response, and competitor behavior.

That repeated cycle of decision-making and feedback helps students move beyond definitions and into applied marketing judgment.

NewShoes is commonly used as a team-based simulation. Teams allow students to discuss strategy, divide responsibilities, analyze reports together, and practice collaborative decision-making. Interpretive generally recommends teams of 3–4 students, with smaller teams often working well in online courses.

NewShoes can be run across multiple decision periods, depending on the course schedule and learning goals. The simulation allows up to 12 decision periods, and many instructors run approximately 8–10 periods. A practice round is often used to help students learn the interface before the official competition begins.

Yes. NewShoes can be used in face-to-face, online, and hybrid courses. In online courses, instructors often use smaller teams and a clearly defined decision schedule to help students coordinate their work. Interpretive provides course setup and technical support, which helps reduce the administrative burden for instructors.

Yes. Instructors can customize elements such as the number of decision periods, team size, number of teams, market entry timing, availability of contract bids and direct sales, assignments, quizzes, and practice rounds.

This flexibility allows instructors to align NewShoes with their course schedule, learning objectives, and teaching style.

Instructors choose the simulation options, assignments, and schedule, while Interpretive handles simulation administration and student technical support. This allows instructors to focus on teaching, discussion, and debriefing rather than logistics.

Interpretive provides fully administered simulation support. The Interpretive team helps with course setup, simulation scheduling, student access, and technical support. Each instructor is also paired with a customer relationship manager who can answer questions and help plan the simulation experience.

Students take on the role of a marketing management team for an athletic shoe company. They choose a brand name, develop a strategy, enter decisions each period, review results, purchase market research, and adjust their marketing mix based on performance and competition.

Their goal is to grow sales and profits by making thoughtful marketing decisions and learning from the results of those decisions.

Students make decisions related to the 4 P’s of marketing: product, price, promotion, and place. These include product development spending, selling price, consumer advertising, consumer sales promotion, personal selling, dealer promotion, and market entry decisions.

Depending on the setup, students may also have opportunities to bid on contracts or sell directly to consumers.

Students may compete in up to three regions: Home, Domestic, and Foreign. Each region represents a different type of market, and students must think carefully about how customers and distribution channels may differ across regions.

This structure helps students see why one marketing mix may not work equally well in every market.

Yes. NewShoes gives students a practical way to understand market segmentation because each region responds differently to marketing decisions. Students must compare markets, consider customer expectations, review market research, and adjust their strategy rather than applying the same approach everywhere.

All companies begin with a basic athletic shoe. By investing in product development, students can improve their product over time and potentially release new versions. Product development reinforces the idea that marketing is not only about communication and pricing, but also about offering a product that meets changing customer needs.

Product development investments affect demand, and students learn that product decisions must be balanced with pricing, promotion, and market strategy. Overspending or underinvesting can both create problems, so students must think carefully about timing, competitive position, and long-term goals.

Students set selling prices for each region in which they operate. Pricing affects both sales and profitability, so students must consider company goals, costs, competitor prices, and how customers respond to price.

This helps students understand that pricing is not simply about charging more or less. A good pricing decision depends on market conditions, costs, positioning, and strategy.

Students make both consumer-focused and channel-focused promotion decisions. Consumer promotion includes advertising and consumer sales promotion. Channel promotion includes personal selling and dealer promotion, which help encourage distributors and retailers to carry and support the product.

This gives students a useful way to understand the difference between pull strategies aimed at consumers and push strategies aimed at the distribution channel.

Yes. In NewShoes, place is represented through market entry decisions, distribution channels, salespeople, dealer promotion, and optional contract opportunities. Students must decide where to compete and how to support distribution in each market.

This helps students see that even a strong product needs the right channel strategy to reach customers.

Yes, if enabled. Contract bidding introduces a simple business-to-business dynamic, where teams may compete to supply shoes for a retailer. Direct-to-consumer sales add channel strategy considerations by asking students to think about how selling through the web may interact with existing retail channels.

NewShoes teaches both. Early in the simulation, students focus on tactical marketing decisions such as pricing, promotion spending, product development, and market entry. As the simulation progresses, students must think more strategically about how those decisions fit together across regions, competitors, costs, and long-term goals.

Students use company reports, market research, dashboards, income statements, break-even analysis, cost-of-goods tools, response functions, and contract bid analysis where applicable. These tools help students forecast outcomes, evaluate results, understand performance, and make more informed marketing decisions.

After each period, students receive company performance reports, financial summaries, and market research data. Built-in analysis tools help students connect decisions to outcomes and evaluate whether changes were caused by their own decisions, competitor behavior, market conditions, or a combination of factors.

Students evaluate performance using measures such as revenue, net profit, return on sales, market share, unit costs, customer satisfaction, and regional performance. The simulation encourages students to look beyond a single number and understand how their decisions affect the overall business.

Yes. While NewShoes is a marketing simulation, students work with important financial measures such as revenue, cost of goods sold, gross margin, expenses, net profit, return on sales, and market share.

This helps students connect marketing decisions to business outcomes and see how pricing, promotion, product development, and market entry affect profitability.

Teams often struggle when they price too high or too low for a market, overspend on promotion without a clear strategy, neglect product development, enter too many markets too quickly, or fail to analyze market research and competitor behavior.

These challenges often become valuable teaching moments because students can see how specific decisions affected their results.

NewShoes includes optional assignments and assessments that can support topics such as strategic planning, brand name development, market segmentation, income statement analysis, break-even analysis, pricing, consumer promotion, channel promotion, product positioning, and final presentations.

Instructors can select the assignments that best fit their course objectives.

Instructors typically use a combination of simulation performance, online quizzes, individual and team assignments, and peer evaluations. This approach balances the competitive team experience with individual accountability and concept mastery.

No. NewShoes is designed for introductory marketing courses and includes student materials that explain the business situation, the marketing mix, strategic planning, decision-making, forecasting, and performance measurement. Students learn as they make decisions and interpret the consequences.

No. Students work with financial and market data, but the simulation does not require advanced math or statistics. The focus is on marketing judgment, analysis, and decision-making. Students use reports and analysis tools to understand performance, evaluate tradeoffs, and improve their strategy.

The learning curve is manageable, especially when students read the case, complete a practice round, and use the built-in decision analysis tools. Students typically become more confident once they understand the cycle of making decisions, advancing the simulation, reviewing results, and adjusting their strategy.

Students often come away with a stronger understanding of the 4 P’s of marketing, competitive dynamics, market segmentation, the tradeoff between growth and profitability, and how marketing decisions interact over time. They also learn that marketing success usually depends on alignment across product, price, promotion, place, and strategy, rather than one isolated right decision.

To get started, request a demo or contact Interpretive to discuss your course. The Interpretive team can help you choose the right setup, determine the number of decision periods, plan team structure, select assignments, and integrate NewShoes into your syllabus.