Allround Simulation Reflection Paper

For my marketing principles class, we had to work through a simulation on a market share website. In this simulation, we had to choose our product, decide on how much to charge for the product, and to work through the obstacles that the simulation threw our way. You start out as a member of the brand management team for Allround. Allround is a brand for cold medicine and you decide what some of the ingredients are, where to supply your product, which benefits that are listed on the product, and many more things. There were a couple practice rounds and about six rounds right after the practice rounds. Each round is different from the last when it comes to the market conditions.

At the start of the simulation, I did not really understand what

was going on to be honest. I definitely did not end up with the best stock price at the end of the simulation. One of the biggest things I looked at before I made my decisions was the market update. The simulation gave us different market conditions for each period and the market update tab gave me a good idea on what those conditions are like. Some examples of what is in these updates would be telling me that one of my competitors released a new cold medicine into the market, if market prices increased or decreased, which retailer had the most growth and sales, and many different other important factors. The market update tab would sometimes also have messages that would give you tips on how to improve your decisions. An example of a tip would the simulations telling me to check the pricing report because some retailers are complaining that you are not providing enough promotion allowance for Allround compared to the competition. Every once in a while I would ask a classmate for help or compare decisions with someone else, but I mainly did this simulation by myself. Looking back now, it probably would have been a better idea to work more with my classmates. It was mainly just a handful of us in the class comparing stock prices after we submitted our decisions. About half way through the semester, everyone in the class started having problems at the second period. The simulation was letting us advance into the third period. It kept saying that there was an error with my decision inputs and it would not let me submit my decision. Usually, the simulation would not let you advance if you had spent more money on your decisions than you currently have or some other situation like that. I went back and changed everything and it still would not let me advance. My class soon figured out that we were in the wrong simulation. We were in the individual simulation and we needed to be in the team simulation. So after several weeks of work, we had to start all over again in a new simulation. I felt like after the whole class had to restart we all lost some interest in the simulation. I was kind of frustrated with having to start over, but of course, it was not the end of the world. I just noticed that I used to talk a lot about the simulation in class with my classmates, but after that, no one really said anything about it. So I am assuming that I am not the only one who was a little frustrated. Besides that, there was not that many problems with the simulation.
In my macroeconomics class, we talked about inflation and deflation and how it affects the market. As inflation increases so does the prices for everyday items. In the simulation, it would inform me in the market update tab if there was any inflation and how much inflation there was. I am not an expert, but I know inflation in the simulation should have an effect on how you price your product, as well as what you should set your volume discount at. I think it is a lot easier to sit in a class and learn the different marketing strategies and all the different factors to look at when selling, distributing, and promoting a product. The hard part is to go out and actually put this knowledge to the test. We learned how to look at individual markets in our microeconomics class, but everything we looked at was very simplified and everything also depended on certain market factors remaining constant, ceteris paribus, but in real life, no factors are going to be constant. Everything in my past classes was based on an assumption, which makes it possible to study the market, but I feel like it did not help me as much as I thought it would in this simulation. So after completing this market simulation, I now believe that the best way to understand the market would be to work on simulations like this. At least it would be the best way for me. With that being said, I still think it is important to take classes like macroeconomics and microeconomics. It is important to get a simple and basic understanding of the market and how it works before working on simulations like this one. I also came to the conclusion that I was not looking at all the information that I should have been before making my decisions. I did not purchase any of the other tabs like shopping habits, channel sales, and marketing expense. Looking back now, I probably should have purchased some of these extra tabs. Even though I spent plenty of time reading the market updates and checking my prices, I was still having trouble keeping my stock price up.
My main goal at the at the beginning of the simulation was to get a higher stock price than my friends. I soon realized that my goal of beating my friends was not the best goal and it probably was not very realistic. My short term goal was to try to not let my stock price decrease after each advancement. My long term goal was to finish with a higher stock price than what I started out with. Looking back now I should have read more of the reports about the market provided by the simulation. As I stated before, I had a basic knowledge about how markets work and I thought my past experiences with macro, micro, and other marketing classes would have helped more. Doing more and more simulations would be the best way to help me gain more knowledge on how the markets work.
I should have asked for more help from my friends with this simulation, but I feel like I did learn a lot from my failures.

I feel like I learned more from my failures in this simulation than if I would have just literally made the same decisions as one of my classmates. I would not have learned much from having a friend succeed for me, but I know that a little help from a friend would have been beneficial. After finishing this simulation, I was a little disappointed with the results. With that being said, I know that I have the potential to do better. I think that this was a great experience for me even though I struggled with the simulation. I learned that I need to review all the possible information before making a decision, not just some of the information I feel to be the most important. I am not a huge fan when it comes to failure, so I think that this experience will help me strive to get better and help me understand the markets more. I know that I want to to be involved in the Agriculture market when I graduate, so I know that I need to expand my decision making abilities and my ability to analyze data. I know that I will have to continue to work for my goals for the future, but I know that I am up for the challenge. I am not the type of person who can just look at a problem and know the answer right away. I honestly might go through this simulation a couple more times just to see if I can improve from my first trial. I will be able to do a better job at gathering all the information I need to make the best

decisions.
Overall, I thought this was a very interesting assignment. As you can see, I learned a tremendous amount of valuable information from doing this simulation.