pharaphase individual report

Business project

Mike’s bike Multi- Player

Final reflection report

By

Hana Kim

11500985

Lecture: Rex Walsh(Tue. 9am)

Tutorial: Rex Walsh(LA-T1)

Before starting the multi-player

It has been less than 3 weeks since I first tried the single player. I may have repeated 4 or 5 times from year one to four to understand it better and acknowledge myself how this game works. Single player was so useful and give us the right guideline. It was quite easy to win against the computer because all the decision was kind of foreseeable. Through this practice I have learned how to read report more effectively and where to focus by different bikes. Benchmark report was showing two competitor’s decision so it was clear what was good or bad decision. I am very excited to start this multi-player and I am very sure our team will do well in our world and also overall in class.

Achievement

Mike’s bike simulation gave me the brief idea of how business is operating in real world. All the decision we made could determine the success or failure of the business, so that analytical approach was essential. I also learned how to read all different report and which report is related to different category and the impact of issuing shares and pay the dividend is so important for keeping the shareholder values up.

Challenges

Multi-player is much hard to predict the outcome compare to single player. Competing against 6 different companies and their decisions are so unpredictable. Even we did make good decision, still hard to be rank 1 in world. Production management and the price of the mountain bike was hardest decision to make, because it was basically depends on luck.

Team work

Our team work started very good and it kind of got worse as time passed. The main issue was among 4 of us, 2 of them didn’t do the single player and attended the meeting. This basically caused argument and the direction and main strategy of the game was ignored. Me and another member who played single many times, we suggested so many times that they also need to play single to understand the game, and this didn’t happen till we had massive online argument. We were wasting our time on something so simple which can be learn from single player, with disagreement. And when the result came out one of the member started to blame so it was so hard to put up with that attitude. I stopped all the messages which happened until 1:30 am and suggested that we should talk face to face. Everyone was very angry and wanted to leave the group or let that person to leave the group, but I knew that wasn’t the solution. The next day I send the message to everyone saying that I really want to finish this course without any problem and graduate on time. And arrange the meeting time; the meeting went so well because other 2 members who never tried single, they showed up after trying single player. So there was no huge disagreement and we were all happy. It wasn’t easy to work with someone who I don’t really know, even they are from same country as I am, still so many possibilities to have issues and by try to talked to them honestly everything can get better.

1. First Rollover

· Key things to focus in this round

The First decision looks simple and easy but it is the most important round throughout the game, since this round will decide the advantageous position for the game.

· First Decision

· First Result World #2 , Class #2

Reason for the result

The first result was satisfactory, but we need to analyse the reason why we coundln’t win Rhythm. Rhythm’s awareness was 0.35 and our’s was 0.31, and our price was $5 more than Rhythm. Higher awareness and cheaper price was Rhythm’s winning point.

Things to improve next year

· Spend more in advertising to have awareness of 0.50 which was recommended from the lecturer.

· PR is slightly lower than Rhythm so we have to consider neither increase it or not.

· We have to reconsider the price setting. At least make it cheaper than Rhythm.

2. Second Rollover

· Key things to focus in this round

We had to reconsider and try to predict what other competitor’s decision going to be. Our decision is to increase our sale price to make more profit. Distribution for the shops, support and margin are main discussion for this round.

We have increased our price from $715 to $728, increased advertising from $3,000,000 to $4,000,000, and decreased PR from $700,000 to $0

· Second Result World #2, Class #8

Reason for the result

The SHV gap between Rhythm and us has increased from $0.26 to $0.84 and the reason is we fail to predict the right retail price. Thing could be worse if Rhythm could control the capacity but luckyly the production was set as maximum of 30,000 so Rhythm had lost sale. That kind of help us sell a bit more. Rhythm’s awareness is still higher than us by 0.04, PR by 0.14, and distribution by 0.04.

Things to improve next year

· Spend more in advertising to have awareness of 0.50 which was recommended from the lecturer.

· PR is much lower than Rhythm so we have to consider neither increase it or not.

· We have to reconsider the price setting. At least make it cheaper than Rhythm.

· Rhythm had lost sales of 2,200 which worked better for us; we have to try to come up with more accurate forecast number to prevent the lost sale.

3. Third Rollover

· Key things to focus in this round

Capacity control through its efficiency can reduce idle time and wastage, and repaying long term debt does increase SHV and this was proven by single player.

· Third Decision

· Third Result World #1 , Class #1

Reason for the result

All teams had their SHV decreased including our team. We have $0.75 higher than Rhythm but since our SHV decreased from $16.46 to $15.16, $1.30 decreased so we have to check what we did wrong to make the SHV decreased. Our price, awareness,PR, distribution, qualith and market share are lower than Rhythm and we do need solution for this to win the competition.

Things to improve next year

· Consider to increase the price of Mountain bike.

· PR is slightly lower than Rhythm so we have to consider neither increase it or not.

· We have to spend more on quality and distribution.

· SHV can never decrease!! This mean we did something wrong and we have to find out what was the cause.

· New product launching! Analyse and decide which will be the better option.

4. Forth Rollover

· Key things to focus in this round

This round is very important since we can increase our SHV dramatically by launching a new type of bike. Through lots of discussions and trial of single player our group decided to go for Road bike, because the margin is much higher than Youth bike even its demand is 1/5 of Youth.

· Fourth Decision

We increased the price of mountain from $702 to $715, Bike shop distribution support from $50,000 to $100,000, margin for sports store from 25% to 27% , branding from $1,000,000 to $1,200,000, SUC from 0 to 11,600, efficiency from $600,000 to $1,500,000, Quality from $750,000 to $4,500,000 and Repurchased equity of $500,000.

Decreased production from 33,600 to 29,031, advertising of mountain bike from $4,700,000 to $3,500,000.

· Forth Result World #2 , Class #9

Reason for the result

The SHV gap between Rhythm and us has increased from $0.84 to $12.94 which is very bad. There are several reasons for the result. The main thing is we decreased our advertising cost and it droped our awareness which was really bad choice. Our team had disagreement on this but at the end we just gave up on someone who had really strong opinion on this. Another reason is our prices for both Road and Mountain were too low compare to Rhythm and this affected our profit. Production forecast was missed too, by producing too little and we had lost sale in both Road and Mountain, which resulted lost of $7,251,426 for Road and $694,980 for Mountain.

Things to improve next year

· Production forecast is so important and that was the main failure in this round. Never make the same mistake.

· PR is lower than Rhythm so we have to consider neither increase it or not.

· We have to reconsider the price setting. At least make it cheaper than Rhythm but also not too low.

· New product launching! Youth bike will be launching next year, we need to consider how much can we sell when there will be 6 different company competing.

5. Fifth Rollover

· Key things to focus in this round

· Fifth Decision