Adventure Works Marketing Plan

Introduction: A business simulation game plays a very important role to understand the real business world after studying all theory and lots of accounting calculation. It enables us to apply different strategy and make decision in real world. Mikesbikes is one of them, a virtual world of business. This simulation contains different segments, advertising allocation, capacity, distribution debt and equity control etc. There are two versions of Mikesbikes business simulation:

1. Single play and
2. Multiplay.

Mikesbikes Intro Multi play by Smartsims is really a helpful for business simulation to get used to real world business. Multi play gives almost similar environment as real world so that one can understand the business strategy very easily.

Multi-Player Experience:

1st Rollover: First, we were required to change the name of the company to our own selective name. I named company Bikes. I went through the year ahead report to understand the general idea of the market and to learn the steps required to make decisions for business. According to that strategy we applied moderate price and advertising campaign especially in magazine and a little bit in PR and produced the mountain bike more than we need to get rid of loss of sales. we were only allowed to operate the company with mountain bike. We tried entering amounts which were higher than the default price such as $700 with significant change in the PR and advertisement. The result after first roll over was not impressive as the SHV was dropped or increased from $11 to $.

2nd Rollover: On second week of the game I started with bit more understanding of the basic idea of this simulation, I was better in decisions for the first few years than last week. Following recordings have been made during the game play. After discussing with our respected tutor, I understood to focus on advertisements for the first year. I started back again and made decisions according to the suggestion.

The year consist of branding and distribution margin. I decided to decrease the price from $710 to $705 to increase our sales. After studying market research, I realized that we must focus on production and high awareness therefore I decided to increase my production as well as forecast sales. I raised the brand awareness budget from 250000 to 700000 and we decided to support our distributor channels where I mainly focused on sports store with providing 60 stores and giving them 25% margin over sales. Following are the results after the roll over:

The results were promising if I compare them over the period we spent on this simulation. I realized the rise in awareness and PR paid off well. There were no lost sales and the rise in the share market was the right direction to go from. Spending on branding was crucial for these results; however, I was lagging in distribution because I didn’t reach enough distributors for my product. So far, the capacity level was under control as there wasn’t much in closing stock which in turn reduced the expense of storing and keeping bikes in the warehouse.

3rd Rollover: The decision planning for the year 2021 was according to the instructions given under the year ahead report and I made sure that I stick to the principles underlined there. I increased the retail price a little bit with more spending on advertisement and PR campaign. The budget for the branding was adequate in my understanding, therefore, I didn’t touch the numbers except I saw the drop in forecasted quality level by keeping the same figures for the next year. Hence, I raised the budget for the quality sector to keep it up to 80%. I increased the production to keep the sales and the market share at the rising level as shown in previous reports. I also provided more support for the sports store along with discount and bike shops, but the major focus was sports store because of the bike category. The following results are recorded after the roll over:

4th Rollover: The new product was also introduced in Multi player for the 4th year of the business. Very clear instructions were provided at the year ahead summary, basically that was the most important information and reasonable help to make adequate strategies and decisions.

• It will cost $1 million to launch a new product.
• It will cost $1 million to improve the specifications of your existing product.
• It will cost $1 million to reduce the cost of existing product.
• It will cost $2 million to both improve the specifications and reduce the cost of existing product. I made decision of launching a youth bike by looking at my income level. At the launch of the youth product I decided to increase the support of discount shops in distribution channels and I also set the advertisements and PR at the required level as displayed in the research report. Most of the buyers can be reached by means of TV. Therefore, I spend equally in PR and advertisements campaign for youth bike and the result was outstanding for our company.

The outcome for year 2022 was encouraging as SHV had risen in that year. This was made possible due to spot on distribution strategy. However, I also realized that I have lost youth bike sales because of under production. So, the focus for the next year would be adequate production level and maintaining the customers following.

5th Rollover: For next year planning, I decided to make vague decision of buying back shares and distribution of dividend. I also planned to launch road bike with the price of $2100 with the production capacity of 50000 aligned with other production capacity of 25000 youth and 25000 mountain bikes. The price for mountain bike was increased as well as for youth bike. The decision of $0 dividend was also made with the maximum number of shares buy back. The result was incredible, the shareholder value increased dramatically to $.

If I compare the previous years with other, I performed well in this year. I need to focus more in finance area. Eventually results was good for the last 2 years with the increasing SHV as shown above but I was still not touching the competitive target. Despite the leading provider of the bikes in 3 categories I was still lacking the value in shareholdings.

6th Rollover: Finally, we got all the control in the 6th year of the game. We increased our capacity and we paid a lot in the efficiency and quality and branded our product to add more awareness. Besides, we bought back all the equity which also contributes a lot to increase in our shareholder value and we paid maximum amount of dividend. We improved our mountain, youth and launched Road bikes that cost us almost $4m. We increased our product price because of the improvement of the products. The Road bike is very expensive product. From the market reports we found that the quality is king for Road bikes and spent a lot in the Magazine in PR. There was extra slot given to launch another product, but we decided not to launch a new product because we had already launched the all the product segments. If we would launch a product, it would be same as competing ourselves due to 3 products in the market. The result below demonstrating the how effective our decision was.

7th Rollover: The year 7 in the simulation was average compare to the previous years. We stopped improving and launching new product which cost several million dollars. We looked through the reports and from the market research reports, we found that it is okay to continue with the current product and the cost we made before for advertising and public relation and branding. As we have bought all the shares and that remain 800000 shares, we paid the maximum amount of dividend to increase our shareholder value. We can find the result in the industry benchmark below:

8th Rollover: We followed the previous year strategy in the 8th year. As we stopped improving our product, we decrease our product price to make stability in the sales. We paid dividend as much as we could to increase our shareholder value. In the last year we hardly changed any decisions but again we reduced our product price to maintain previous sales. We decrease the capacity and maintain efficiency and quality index in 90% to 95%. We sold well in the last year of the simulation.

The summery of the game play: Financial statement at the end of the 8th rollover: Important Points to be noted:I learned a lot from the simulation and noted some important points which are beneficial for multiplayer group activity. The points are as follows:

1. Build strong awareness for mountain bike by spending more money on Advertisements. Need to understand which media channel targets achieve best results.
2. Establish powerful distribution plan which covers the targeted market aligned with the market research reports for the given year.
3. Maintain the production capacity to supply the adequate quantity of the products. The balance of the production capacity is crucial to focus on low idle time.
4. Maintain the efficiency level up to the point at which market research suggests. The productive efficiency level can help us reduce the operating expenditure and other expenses which may penalize the factory.
5. Once we have more than 50% market share, we may decide to raise the price because people have previously recognized us. However, we need powerful branding and distribution strategy to cover the maximum sales.

Conclusion: I really enjoyed the game and learnt many things from Multi play and I got realistic experience that let me understand what type of strategy makes customer and shareholder happy and how to increase sales to make more profits. The multi play also helps me to make important decision especially in the crucial year. According to my point of view, Mikesbikes business simulation game is the best way to know the different situation in the business and it also teaches to learn from the mistakes.