Marketing Analysis Essay, Research Paper

Since the Brands Simulation Game is so detailed, one could not expect to know everything in the first quarter. Therefore, our team decided to familiarize ourselves with the game in the first decision. Each of us did some reading on the basic concepts of the game and came to, at least we thought, a well thought out plan. The first step in our plan was to increase sales production 18 more units since the products were selling at a cheaper rate than others. We also knew that sales forecasts are probably going to be the most frequently changed BRANDS decision variables. We also noticed that the price of raw materials was at a cheaper price as well, therefore we decided to purchase syntech, plumbo, and glomp.

Advertising and promotion were another big category we felt needed some adjustments. Since the product is first being introduced to the market we felt it necessary to increase spending on advertisement and promotion. On the other hand we lowered the promotional and advertising expenditures in region two due to the existing popularity of the product throughout the market.

Product awareness is the factor that helped us make our next decision. Product one was already known in region two therefore we decided to have it marketed in only one region with product two being marketed in both regions one and two. Our basis behind marketing product two in two regions was to see which market is more effective for that product. Because we placed product two in two regions we decided to increase the sales force allocation for product two. An increase in the sales force allows us to disperse the sales force in each region evenly in order to get a better idea on our product future. Region 3 was totally eliminated because it was losing money in that region.

Decision two was the time to gain knowledge on our competitors by attaining reports and media content on prospering competitors. We choose the Marketing Strategy (Brand Composition) to find out Firm 6’s compositions and media content. We also did a Regional Summary Analysis to find out the overall prices of our customers. The previous two decisions were meant to better help us understand what made them so successful. As in the first decision, we increased advertisement and promotion because the product sales were not increasing. We reduced sales forecasting in region one because we predicted that because we reintroduced a product back into that region the units sold was not going to increase much. We suspected that by increasing the sales force time allocation in region two and lowering it in region one would help the product that was doing well do better. The final decision in decision two was to eliminate product 4-2 because the company was losing money having the product in both regions.

Decision three was very short, yet meaningful, to increase advertisement and promotion in both regions because sales were not increasing the way they should have been. Decision four was basically the same as the other decisions. An increase in advertisement and promotion was brought about because we believe that our products do not have the consumers’ attention. We again lowered sales forecasting in region one and increased forecasting in region two. By increasing the sales force allocation in regions one and two we are hoping to accomplish higher sales next quarter. A strategy we learned earlier in the year gave us the idea for our last decision. The odd-even pricing strategy states that people are proven to buy more of a product that is priced on an odd number such as $4.99 compared to that of an even, $5.00 purchase. We decided to change the price of the product from 500 to 499 to see how customers react to the one-dollar decrease.

In the next decision we decided to eliminate Region 1 due to its lack of success. The company was continuously losing money, which was a major set back in overall profits. As in every previous decision we increased advertisement and promotion to continually enhance our products appeal to the consumers. It is our belief that these two variables are a must when it comes to the success of our products. The two variables need to be increased in every decision in order to keep up with the ever changing environment. Our employees also need constant attention in order to maximize sales for the products. By increasing their salaries we hope to attract more able sales representatives and hope to enhance the quantity of sales in our existing representatives. The research and development budget was lowered due to the fact that we were not implementing as much as in the past.

We quickly learned that by using the research we could determine what and where the successful competition was using and where they were using it, therefore we increased our research and development two fold.

Our group is gaining the knowledge to hopefully prepare them for a real life situation in the “real world.” I personally feel that just because our group is not doing the best in this simulation we are still learning off of our mistakes.