Markstrat Strategy Game / Last Class for this Term

From Monday through Thursday our class broke into groups and played a simulation game called MarkStrat, short for 'marketing strategy.' Under severe time constraints each team had to make decisions about which product line to develop and which products to sell (or supress) and whether or not to invest company money into R&D. The money here is play money but the numbers are real. Gone is all the abstract theory from the marketing and strategy classes: here you make decisions within numerical constraints. Bad results for the third quarter? Well, find your advertising and R&D budget halved. And so forth.

Our group started off in last place and for four quarters suffered miserably at the bottom of the heap. Then, finally, towards the end, we got our act together and actually ended up on top for the final period (though last in the overall standings). Happy to say that the product I was the product manager for "SYES" did extremely well in the last quarter, the level of advertising and sales support being enough to push it to grab a 10% share of the lucrative "high-earner" market.

Of course, after the game all of us were wiped out. Some of my colleagues went right home after the last class ended on the last day, but I had a meeting with my yearly project group and went to two hours of French class before heading home. And after that .... a Lebanese meal you'll read about in another entry ...