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
| Strategic Marketing | Develop, execute, and refine marketing strategies. Students price, promote, and distribute a portfolio of brands to target segments based upon their needs, market potential, price points and competitive pressures. |
| Sales | Create a global expansion strategy based on market potential, costs, and available resources. |
| Profitability | Plan current period expenses based upon projected sales and planned marketing activities. Profitability reports are available for the firm and individual brands. Students are given seed money to launch the business and must manage their resources in the face of dynamic market conditions. |
| Entrepreneurship | Start up and run a new marketing division for a large international technology company. Students face new challenges, decisions, and information as they naturally unfold over the life-cycle of the product and division. |
Key Differences Between Marketing Simulations
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| 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. | |
| Typical courses | Marketing principles courses, often core curriculum | Intermediate/advanced marketing strategy | Capstone marketing strategy | |
| Educational level | Ideal for novices to marketing, even non-majors or high school seniors | 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•, Spanish•, Portuguese (Brazil)•, Polish•, Russian• | English•, Spanish•, Lithuanian•, Polish• | English | |
| • Compete against classmates or computer (all games playable against classmates) | ||||
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, built-in lectures, contextualizing videos, and detailed help files. 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.
Marketplace Simulations