PharmaSim: Having participated in several rounds of the simulation, you are expected to be generally familiar with the strategic and tactical decisions involved in managing a product portfolio, along with the related material from the PharmaSim handbook. In particular, the following issues are deemed important:

(a). From the "Marketing Management Process" (pages 26-44):

(i) What constitutes situation analysis and how is it different from marketing strategy and making marketing mix decisions What is the five-stage model of the buying process and how might such a model be useful?

(ii) In analyzing customers, how is the 'nature of demand' different from the 'extent of demand'? How are segments, usage rates, and market penetration related to one another? For example, as noted on page 31, do you agree that if the market penetration rate goes from 60% to 80%, sales would climb by 33%? Similarly (from the same page), can you show that if the usage rate goes from 2.7 to 3, sales would go up by 11%? And, given a company's total sales, how would you determine the sales for a given segment (as shown on page 32).

(iii) What does it mean to 'monitor results against plan' (pages 36-37)? What might be some examples of 'symptoms of a problem' and 'root cause of a problem'? How might intermediate measures (such as awareness, shelf space, etc.) help in distinguishing between a symptom and a root cause?

(v) How are margins calculated and prices determined? It will help to review the Pricing assignment and the Margins handout. You should be able to do calculations related to margins that we discussed in class and in the practice problems on Canvas.

(vi) What are some ways of allocating a limited budget across brands? You should be able to do calculations related to this topic as discussed in class and in the practice problems on Canvas.

(b). Market Size and Forecasting: You should be able to do the relevant calculations discussed in class and in the practice problems on Canvas. Do pay attention to the following:

(i) Market size can be described in terms of the number of consumers, units, or dollars. You should be able to think of the implications of a brand having different shares of consumers, units, and dollars.

(ii) How is a moving average computed? How might, for instance, a 4-period moving average be 'better' than a 2-period moving average? In these moving averages, is each observation equally important?

(iii) How is an exponential smoothing forecast different from a moving average forecast? How is an exponential smoothing forecast computed? How is the relative importance of recent observations controlled in developing such a forecast?

(iv) How is a forecast determined using the 'decomposition method'i.e., using the trend, cycle, erratic events, and seasonal components? How is a seasonality index computed? How are seasonality indices used to compare the relative performance across different quarters?