What are Marketplace Simulations?

Let your students experiment with marketing strategies in an engaging game-like exercise. They launch new products to the market and manage the entire product life cycle, from introduction to growth to maturity. Learning content is gradually and purposefully introduced as the market evolves.

Core Learning Content

Key Differences Between Marketing Simulations

Simulations	Introduction to Marketing - Bikes	Strategic Marketing - Bikes	Advanced Strategic Marketing - Bikes
Typical courses	Marketing principles courses, often core curriculum	Intermediate/advanced marketing strategy	Capstone marketing strategy
Description	Introduces the basic concepts of marketing. Based on customer needs, students formulate an initial marketing strategy and make brand, price, advertising, and distribution decisions. Customer feedback, competitor data, and profitability reports challenge students to adjust their strategy in a dynamic and highly competitive environment.	Strategic Marketing takes the intro marketing decisions to a higher level. There are more market segments, brand and advertising options, sales outlets and market reports. It includes more resource planning and advanced marketing techniques such as brand promotions and sales force incentives.	Compared to Strategic Marketing, this simulation offers more complex market research data, a greater number of regions to enter and more options in brand design and advertising. It is marketing at its fullest.
Educational level	Ideal for novice marketing undergrads, even non-majors	Third and fourth year undergraduates	Advanced undergraduate and MBA students
Decision rounds	6 decision rounds of 30-60 minutes	8 decision rounds of 1-2 hours
Class size	Small to large classes (1000+) of marketing and non-marketing majors	Smaller classes of marketing majors. Up to 8 teams per game, 4 – 6 teams of 4 students is optimal.
Languages	English, Portuguese (BR), French, Spanish	English	English

Instructor Involvement

Little effort is required to help students with Marketplace. The simulations illustrate and reinforce the major concepts of marketing. Lectures can tie together student experiences and course content, but they are optional. Student work is self-guided with an intuitive interface, lectures, help files, as well as supplementary Marketplace Microsimulations™ which explore key concepts on a more basic level. A balanced scorecard is used for student feedback, management by the numbers, and grading.

For the more advanced simulations, instructor/student interaction is encouraged. Students are highly receptive to coaching, targeted lectures, and exercises that enhance their strategic planning and marketing skills. A variety of presentations, coaching tips, and exercises are provided to help instructors.

The new Marketplace bike edition of the Strategic Marketing simulation is impressive and my students are really enjoying it! With the addition of Internet Marketing, all are learning about the advantages of organic versus paid online advertising. Marketplace simulations have added enormous value to my marketing strategy course.

~ Gregory Gundlach, University of North Florida