When the simulation was first assigned, I really had no idea what to expect. I assumed that my group members and I would be creating various written documents, which was clearly not the case. After selecting a group composed mainly of my close friends, we began to read through the various materials given to us to help us successfully complete the simulation. After watching a few of the videos from our customers and reading the given document about Minnesota Mircromotors, we began the simulation.
Before the simulation started our group decided that we wanted to put customer atisfaction as our top priority, over market share and profit. After our first quarter, we began to panic because every satisfaction arrow was in the red. Immediately we made changes to everything we did before, restoring us back to equilibrium in the second quarter. From there on out, the simulation ran a lot more smoothly. In our first attempt at the simulation, we played around with the price of the product a lot, trying to keep it lower for Customer D, while also sometimes bringing it up to help increase profits.
By the time I took the simulation individually, I realized that playing with the price was a waste of time. What I found best was to keep the price at $142 or $143, ignoring was Customer D wanted. I found over time the discounts to be much more important. We as well as l, always gave Customer D the largest discount, followed by Customer A, Customer B, and finally Customer C. This gave us the highest customer satisfaction while keeping the price relatively the same. For the distributor discount, we kept it relatively constant throughout, but increased it towards the end in order to keep the customers happy.
For the sales force emphasis pie chart, we tried a lot of different methods to try nd get the best result. The first few times through the simulation we focused our attention on Customer A and C over B and D. This worked throughout fairly well, but wasn’t ultimately the best solution. During my last individual attempt, I completely cut out customer D, while giving half of my attention to Customer. Roughly the remaining half was split between A and B, but it fluctuated a little throughout the simulation. This confguration of the pie chart ended with me getting a much larger score than previous attempts.
During the group simulations, we put a lot of time into figuring out the best way to plit up spending on large/small customers, as well as retaining those same customers. We argued a lot about which should get more emphasis and which did not. I found that no matter what I did, that the small customers seemed to always be very satisfied. Because of this, what I found to work best was to keep both spending and retaining large customers Just slightly about the small. I kept this relatively simulation, and gave me the best score in the end.
Sales force was another aspect of the simulation our group argued a lot about. Half the group thought the sales force was very important, while the other half hought it would be better to use thatmoneyin order to enhance our physical product. What I found that worked the best was to leave the sales force at 1 1, but if I really thought it was necessary to get rid of them then to Just do it for one quarter. I noticed that each time I dropped a few for a quarter that my total budget would sometimes increase by $100, 000.
For that reason alone I did this several times in order to have as large a budget as possible. During the group stages my budget only got up to $800, 000, which we thought was very good. When I took the simulation individually I got the budget to increase to $1. million. I feel that managing my sales force correctly played a key role in obtaining more total budget. The first time we took the simulation, we tried getting rid of market research for the very last quarter. This ended terribly for us and caused us to lose a customer satisfaction star from every customer.
From then on out I left market research at the required $50, 000 Just to stay safe. One of the most important parts of the game I found was spending on IMC. After the first quarter as a group, when we did very poorly, we found that putting money into IMC was the best way to increase our profit nd market share. What I found that worked best regarding IMC, was to basically put all additional budget into it. Almost every quarter I did this, my profits would continue to rise. When I did the simulation individually, every time I gained more money in my total budget that money would address IMC first.
IMC was definitely the key to the game for me. The single most argued part of the simulation for our group was the distribution of money in Power-To-Size Ratio, Manufacturing, and Thermal Resistance. At first it seemed that no matter what we did as a group some customer would complain about something. No customer complained more than Customer B complaining about wanting more thermal. Our group found ourselves always arguing over how much money to put into which of the three categories. We never really did a great Job doing so because there was always an unhappy customer.
What I found to be the best method was based on sure luck. I really wanted to take some relatively large risks in my last attempt at the individual simulation so I cut out Manufacturing Efficiency Improvement entirely. After two quarters of making a huge profit, I kept that up until the end. This gave me more money to put into important things like IMC, Power-To- Size Ratio, and Thermal Resistance. This kept the customers satisfied for the most part. After being the CEO of Minnesota Micromotors, I found that my ideals before I started the simulation were a lot different from how I feel now.
Before the simulation started, our group really wanted to focus on customer satisfaction. For the most part we kept the customers very satisfied and satisfied. I now feel that market share and profit are what were the best ways of achieving a high score. With high profit and market share I was given more budget to work with. This trend kept accumulating ntil both profit and market share were higher than during the first couple simulations. The difference was that my customer satisfaction for my final simulation scores of 55, 60, and 60.
My final score was a 75. Taking risks was something I wasn’t too fond of at the beginning of the simulation. I thought being conservative was definitely the way to go. Because of this I was really conservative at the beginning with my group, as well as myself. I did the best when I took some risks. I am really glad I took a chance in my last simulation because then I really grasped the fact that sometimes you have to focus on the customers that help ou the most instead of focusing on pleasing all of the customers.
Overall, I am really glad we got he opportunity to participate in the simulation. We really got a hands on experience of what we learned in class. I’m glad we got to apply our knowledge, andI believeI learned a lot from doing the simulation. Although I did a lot better individually, it was very helpful to work in a group at first. We did fairly well compared to the rest of the class, and work as a team really helped with that. I would recommend this simulation to any marketing student because it is exactly how I picture the real world working.
