Introduction
In the current assignment the participators were asked to ‘learn by doing’ and to operate a real business. They were asked to tackle the real issues faced by these businesses in the real world and produce a successful company. They were asked to focus especially on the brand advertising, market share as well as sales productivity of their company. It was found that perhaps the most important requirements of any company are successful advertising campaigns and product quality.
Over 6 quarters of our simulation we were told to go through a simulation course which helped us in learning how to run a multifaceted business in the global landscape. I felt that I was able to ‘learn by doing’ and the simulation helped me in learning how to run a business in the real world. I learned about how the business operates generally as a company and how certain different and unique specialized parts of the company work in tandem with other parts as seen in (Egenfeldt-Nielsen & Egenfeldt-Nielsen, 2005).
The game that is used in my assignment can be explained, according to Jesper Juul (2003) as a system which is based p rules and it has a certain outcome that can be quantified. The outcome is arrived at when the separate values accorded to the separate actions taken by the player are calculated. This is the same definition that I attribute to our simulation game as it is an ‘educational computer game’ which is solely made and created to be used in settings that can only be labeled as educational (Egenfeldt-Nielsen & Egenfeldt-Nielsen, 2005). The current method of learning also enabled me to work on my personal characteristic faults and I was able to concentrate easily on my task at hand, this is a view that is also shared by Egenfeldt-Nielsen & Egenfeldt-Nielsen (2005).
I also opened Sales offices in two areas; in Chicago as well as the Shanghai region. Along with this a web office was also opened which operated from Chicago but it catered to all of the customer base which is present worldwide.
The challenges I faced in projecting the demand of my customer base were multifarious. However I was able to meet the demand of my customer base for all quarters and this decreased the ill will amongst them towards my company.
My potential demand was 178 out of which 116 of the demand were for our JW Tec 1 brand (Desktop) and 62 was for JW Tec 2 brand (Laptop). The JW Tec 1 brand remained the most popular amongst the customer base and this led to an almost direct decrease in the sales of the JW Tec 2 brand. As both JW Tec 2 brand and JW Tec 1 brands were new brands it was difficult for me to project the reaction the new product would lead to. The Workhorse segment required that there must be savings in operator cost and multi-purpose workstation with easy to use PC the sale price are the lowest.
Mercedes required high performance and ultra-fast computers with fast processing speed and powerful processors. I only managed to match the database requirement for the desktop and the Laptop. The advertisements of the products were also changed according to the consumer needs and JW Tec 2 was hailed as the most powerful brand on market which is easy to use and has a high resolution. Compared to thus JW Tec 1’s brand was mentioned more so that the brand name is recognizable. As the advertisements Of JW Tec 1 brand were so similar to the requirements of Workhorse segment that I was able to project that a higher number of customer base would demand the JW Tec 1 brand. Mercedes and Workhorse segment were my main priorities. The price Workhorse segment was willing to pay was 2,500 and Mercedes was willing to pay 4,100 so I priced JW Tec 1 between both these prices and JW Tec 2 was priced below the lower price of 2,500. This made JW Tec 1 brand popular amongst both the Workhorse and Mercedes segment as there was a rebate of 760 in place as well. The pricing of JW International Associates were one of the most flexible, with high rebates in operation, and this made JW Tech 1 brand (the brand with the highest rebate) a popular brand amongst Workhorse, Mercedes and Traveller segment in the second sector.
Additionally this also led to a larger number of JW Tec 2 brands in the Inventory at the end of the Quarter as the supply was more than the demand. I was also aware of how important the forecasting of the introduction of the new product was as neglecting to properly do so would mean that only a minute amount of my business will be forecasted. I also compared the sales data for the first and second quarter of the game to forecast how the initial reaction to JW Tec 1 brand was in the consumer base. Resulting, I started a fixed capacity increase due to which an increase in the capacity is made automatically only in every quarter and this made it easier for me to match the increase in product demand in later time.
My main focus was on the Sales Office and Web Center along with research and development in the first quarter so that the products are familiarized to the customers and so that we could work on specific areas of the product like user friendly features etc.
I was also careful to base my production exactly according to the projected demand and this helped me in avoiding stocking out. If I had stocked out my customer base would have garnered ill will towards my product and thus would have resulted in negative sales of JW International Associates.
I also had to depend on a number of things to forecast the demand. I took special care of the economic growth of the area and the technological development in the area. This helped me increase the market share as it helped me identify what percentage of the population could be relied on to become a customer of JW International Associates. I also saw that the majority of my sales were done through the Sales Office Channel in the third quarter and learning from this I continued to rely on the strength of this channel as a Sales Office. In order to increase sale in the Web sale I improved the web traffic by upgrading the site and listing our site with large search engines.
Opportunities
All of my competitors had two Sales offices and one Web Center. I also had two Sales offices which were based in the most saturated markets in the world market of microcomputers. There were a total of three similar companies operating in Chicago and there was another company operating in the area of my second Sales office. My direct competitor in Shanghai employed more sales people than I did and this led to a decrease in my sale figures in that area.
Another decision of one of my competitors, Piekainen Tech Inc, was to focus most on the Website. I also failed to take additional decisions that would increase web traffic. As the Websites of all of my competitors were in the same global market of my company, this decision costed me dearly. I lost potential Web sales due to the saturation in the market. I also made no decisions on increasing the productivity of my website. As my Sales in the Sales offices were comparatively healthy I should have focused more on my website to increase revenue from online sales as I had the lowest Web Center demand.
Three of my competitors also had more inserts than I did. Even though my advertisement was one of the highest rated advertisements, I did not circulate it the frequency in the media outlets as compared to my competitors. I should have focused more on the advertisement of my brands to increase the brand recognition as well as sales. My advertisement was also not rated the highest in the segment of my first priority; Workhorse.
I also had the lowest of the worker’s compensation and this affected the productivity of the workers making my workers the least productive workers amongst all of my competitors. In order to increase the productivity of the sales force workers I would have increased the vacation by 1 week and the salary would have been increased from 30,000 to 31,000 as it is the most important feature for those working in the electronic firms. The Health Benefits were also the second most important for electronic firms and I would have increased my current coverage from 4,500 to 5,100.
For industry factory workers I would have increased the salary from 17,000 to 17,400. The health Benefits would remain the same however the vacation would be increased to 564 days and the pension would also remain the same.
Comparison with competitors
Market Share
In the fourth quarter my Market share suffered immensely. My market share for my first priority; Workhorse segment was only 7% and for my second priority; Mercedes segment was 0%. This remained so even though the market size and the segment size increased because my profit margin remained very low for all quarters. I also failed to add new channels for distribution by introducing more Sales offices (Reidenbach, 2010). Due to all this my profitability was very low as it dropped to -6,000 in the third quarter. The single most fatal reason for the decrease in market share remained my financial performance.
Product quality/ brand judgment
JW Tech 1 was the only brand amongst the Top 8 brands in my first priority of the Workhorse segment. JW Tec 1 tested to be 55 for the Workhorse segment as compared to JW Tec 2 which was 21. Surprisingly JW International was 44 for the Traveler segment. Both my brand had the standard capacity hard drive whereas my competitors quoted for one brand to have standard and one to have either high or ultra-capacity hard drive. A number of soft wares were also missing in my brand as compared to that of Trendsetters. The quality of my brand was hence the lowest as compared to that of my immediate competitors and this led to a sharp decrease in the demand of my brand in the world market at 178. Piekainen Tech had the highest demand due to the fact that they had the most brands, four in total, in production.
Advertising quality and media placements
The advertisements for either of my brands were not rated as acceptable for my first priority of Workhorse segment whereas my advertisement of JW PC 1S by JW international Associates was rated as good for Mercedes segment. Computerland’s advertisements were the most rated for Workhorse. The main reason my advertisements were not as effective as those of my competitors was due to the fact that their distribution was also extremely low. My number of inserts was amongst the lowest of all other inserts. JW LT 1 S was also poorly advertised and it was not suitable for advertisement for any segment and because of this I also faced additional issues in the advertisement of my products. I also spent less on my advertisements as compared to my competitors.
Sales Productivity
Sales productivity was also amongst the lowest for JW International Associates as the expenses were higher than the margin. This forced me to incur a negative percentage from sales revenue and this further pushed JW International associates into debt. Our sales force in the Chicago- NORAM was amongst the largest and this increased the cost. The largest expenses were in the sales force expense and yet my sales force was not as productive as the sales force of my competitors. The expenses were most in regard to the Excess Capacity Cost and this was result of the low demand for JW Tec 2 brand. If the JW Tec 2 Brand would have been focused on more and it’s advertisement had been more freely circulated it would not have led to the excess capacity cost. I also did not improve the productivity of the employees.
Strengths and Weaknesses
The strengths of my business were the good advertisements that we created. Additionally our products were also amongst the lowest priced products of the market. However this was also a big weakness in our business model as the rebates offered to the customers were far too high as compared to the rebates offered by other companies. Our product brands were also limited as compared to other companies and because of this the demand for my product was considerably low as compared to say Piekainen Tech which offered four different brands.
Our Brands also sported very basic features and because of this they appealed to a fewer stratagem of the global market. As our sales were most concentrated in the saturated market of Web sales and the Chicago area we also suffered in this regard as the increase in competition led to dwindling sales of JW International Associates.
We had the highest Operating Capacity of all the other companies however we suffered the most due to the lowest market share in the global market. In my opinion the sole reason for this is the weakness of our products and the weakness of our advertising campaign for JW LT S which was distributed in very few magazines and which had the lowest inserts among all company brands. This also affected the demand for our products as our second most important segment of our choosing i.e Mercedes had the lowest demands for both the products due to their lacking features.
Our Sales Offices boasted to be one of the biggest Sales Offices in the tristate area however due to the decrease in demands even this could not increase our sales. Our Web Centre expenses remained one of the highest and despite this due to the lack of planning our demand remained the same. Our Human Resources department was also weak and this lead to a mismanagement of benefits for the Sales Force worker, Factory worker and Industry Factory worker which led to lower overall productivity of the company's workforce. On average our worker was underpaid and had the lowest health benefits amongst all the competing companies.
Our web page was also not very productive as we undertook no steps to increase the productivity of this important part of our total sales and as a result our sales figures suffered.
Important lessons
The three of the most important lessons that I learned from this assignment is that in order to increase the demand the product needs to be top notch. The product should also be manufactured completely in line with the requirements of the customer base as this will directly affect the demand of our product in the world market. If possible, different types of products should be manufactured in order to target the different stratagems of the customer base.
Another important learning point for me was that any company relies heavily on its advertisement and in order to target certain customers the advertisement of the product needs to be handled carefully. Once a good advertisement campaign has been created, it then becomes imperative for the company to properly disseminate and distribute the advertisements in those media preferences which are used by the priority customer. This needs to be done in a large frequency to increase the customer demand for the product. The media placements in the world market should be focused on as it has the ability to make or break a company due to its almost direct effect on the demand for the products.
The last lesson that I learned is perhaps the most basic of them all; that a happy workforce is an effective workforce. A company needs to work on increasing the productivity of all of its workers by increasing their benefits and if it does so then it will see an automatic increase in the productivity of the work force. A company should not focus on hiring the biggest workforce amongst its competitors but rather a happier and better cared for workforce would lead to a better company.
References
Egenfeldt-Nielsen, S. & Egenfeldt-Nielsen, S. (2005). Beyond edutainment. Copenhagen: IT University of Copenhagen, Department of Innovation.
Juul, J. (2016). The Game, the Player, the World: Looking for a Heart of Gameness. In M. Copier, Level Up: Digital Games Research Conference Proceedings (1st ed.). Utrecht: Utrecht University.
Reidenbach, R. (2010). Listening to the voice of the market. Boca Raton: CRC Press.
