market simulation 1-2 pages (finish in 3 hours)

UVA-M-0677H Rev. Dec. 9, 2015

This user guide was prepared by Paul W. Farris, Landmark Communications Professor of Business Administration; Gerry Yemen, Senior Researcher;

and Jerome Dane, Software Engineer. Copyright  2013 by the University of Virginia Darden School Foundation, Charlottesville, VA. All rights reserved. To order copies, send an e-mail to [email protected]. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, used in a spreadsheet, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the permission of the Darden School Foundation.

Positioning Game

User Guide

Overview

The Positioning Game simulation (UVA-M-0677) was designed to offer an opportunity to actively experiment with realistic problems in product marketing—market definition, segmentation, and positioning. The game has a focus on perceptual mapping; players will be asked to make decisions, often quickly, in the context of a new product launch and impending competition.

There are anywhere from two to six players in each market who are competing for customers in the segment. All players must be logged in at the same time to play. Your instructor will set the number of rounds to be played as well as the duration of each round. A timer has been built into the game and coordinates the rounds moving forward. No new round of positioning can occur until all players in the market have completed the round.

If a player’s computer is disconnected, the simulation will wait for that player to reconnect and either click “Submit,” or allow the timer to expire. The simulation advances automatically when the first of the following is true:

 All users in the market have pressed the Submit button

 The timer has been allowed to run out while open on the computers of all users in the market

A password is required to access the simulation. If you don’t have one prior to playing, please contact your instructor. Once the game URL is available, your instructor will invite you to start the game. But before you do, please read the instructions with care.

Signing In and Starting the Game

To access the exercise, open the URL you receiveds either from your instructor in class or in an e-mail message sent through the Forio.com simulation platform. You will be prompted with a log-in screen (Figure 1). Please enter your e-mail address or username and the assigned password, then click “Log In.”

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Figure 1. User log-in screen.

Source: All figures created by case writer.

At the start of the first round, brief instructions will ask you to consider where the best position for your product would be on the grid (see Figure 2). Please note that there are two tags in the upper right corner:

People icon:

Player Identification icon:

The People icon indicates the number of players who have already logged in to your market. Clicking on or moving your mouse over the People icon provides the status of all players in the group—if green, that player is logged in, and if red, that player is not logged in (see Figure 2). The color-coded Player Identification icon features your log-in name.

Figure 2. Game instructions.

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Clicking the “Join Game” button will either display a notification in a dialog box with a progress bar indicating the number of other players in your market who are ready to start playing (see Figure 3) or will begin the round and start the timer if all other players are ready. The round cannot start until all players are logged in and have joined the game. If you are the last player to click Join Game, the progress bar will not appear. If for some reason a player has to log out, the game will resume at the place where it was left.

Once everyone has joined the game, the market interface will appear (see Figure 4, which is the beverage industry default market. Your instructor may have chosen a different industry, in which case the corner products will look different).

Each corner of the market shows one of the four product choices based upon the extremes of taste. In this example, in the top right quadrant is cola, which is very sweet and fizzy. Soda water (lower right quadrant) is plain and fizzy. Water (lower left quadrant) is plain and flat. And juice (top left quadrant) is very sweet and flat. On the first round, the user sees customers’ preferences graphed within the market space. These customers are currently buying cola, soda water, water, or juice based on how closely their tastes are aligned to each of these four products. The challenge is to enter the market space with a product that matches the taste of as many customers as possible. The trick is that there are five other products that will be launching the same week, and you do not yet know where they fit within the market. Your product icon will be round with a light gray background and your competitors will be squares with black backgrounds. Note that there is also a timer at the bottom of the interface that starts running when all players are ready. There is also a cost indicator set at $0 for the first round.

Figure 3. Number of players ready to start.

Figure 4. The market.

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Positioning the Product

Players will need to click on the grid to set a position somewhere among customer preferences as an initial product placement. The product will then be displayed on the map with a border that matches the color of your username in the upper right side of the header of the simulation interface (see Figure 5). Note that players can click elsewhere on the map (or click and drag their product) to change their position for the week. During the first round, there are no costs to position a product wherever the player wants. This can be done as many times as desired until either the Submit button is clicked or the round timer runs out. A check mark will appear on products whose players have already clicked Submit (see Figure 6). This means that player can no longer reposition their product, and their final position for that round has been recorded. A progress bar will appear at the bottom of the grid. The next round will not be launched until all players in the market have submitted their placement or their timer has run out.

Figure 5. Product placement.

Figure 6. Checked product waiting for competitors.

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As each round is played, the “Results of Week [#]” box toward the upper right side of the interface will display the development costs for the previous week as well as income from orders, marketing and development cost, and operating profit for the previous round (see Figure 7). After the first round, the more a player changes the taste of his or her product (the farther his or her product is moved on the grid), the more the development costs will increase. The simulation will automatically advance as soon as all of the players in the same group have pressed their Submit buttons, or their round timers have run out. The next round starts once all players have submitted choices from the previous round. Players will be able to see where their competitors have positioned their products, as well as how much of the market their product has captured. The “Cumulative Profits” box in the lower right side of the interface shows the total cumulative profits each product captured in the previous rounds.

Figure 7. End of first week in a six-player, low-cost, 15-week game.

Each player will then have the chance to modify the taste of his or her product by repositioning it within the market space in the next round. Just as in the previous round, the farther a product moves from the place it started at the beginning of the round, the more costly the modification to the product will be (see Figure 8).

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Figure 8. Week two of six-player, low-cost, 15-week game.

The game will end after a predetermined number of rounds have been played (see Figure 9), and your instructor will then be able to review each week’s results with the class.

Figure 9. Simulation ended.