Strategic Groups and Marketing Decisions Complete the following discussions: Although strategic groups tend to be rigid, they are by no means fixed. One of the things managers have to be aware of is which firms may change group membership. With the results from Year 13 of the simulation, consider the following: Why do firms tend to cluster into strategic groups? Would it not make sense for firms to spread out across strategic spaces? Why or why not? Explain your rationale. How likely is it that firms competing in other strategic groups will adapt their strategy to compete directly against you? Explain your rationale. Which firms currently not in your strategic group would be most likely to try and enter your group? Why?

Welcome to the course Business Simulation!

This is a unique, experiential course in strategic management. It places you as a member of a top management team in an established athletic shoes manufacturing organization. You and your management partners will guide this firm through eight years of competition with other footwear companies, which are also pursuing the same customers. In managing this organization, you will be required to make a host of decisions on marketing, finance, operations, employee management, and logistics. All these functional decisions will then need to be incorporated into a strategy for competing in markets around the world.

Your organization will compete in traditional retail markets, in private label markets for discount stores, and on the Internet; therefore, you will have a wide range of competitive choices that will allow you and your team to convert this organization into exactly the type of organization you would want it to be, provided you are skilled at formulating and implementing an overall strategy in the face of aggressive competition.

The simulation you are about to immerse yourself in is the most well-established and successful business simulation in the market. It is sophisticated in its ability to replicate competitive market conditions. Over fifteen years of development have allowed the authors and software developers to fine tune the simulation and create a realistic competitive environment. The simulation will be invigorating, frustrating, and exciting all at once, similar to real business competition. A point of difference is that time moves fast here; every week of this class will represent at least one year and more often two years in the global footwear industry.

Along the way, you will also participate in a number of lessons intended to sharpen your strategic management skills. Not only will these lessons be good reviews of some key concepts from past courses, but these lessons will also go a step further and require you to integrate those insights into the perspective of top managers making strategic decisions. By the end of the simulation, you will have significantly increased your understanding of how the various functional areas of business interact in competitive strategies.

In the final week of the course, you will work with your peers to simulate a company and prepare a presentation for potential shareholders (the shareholders will be the students in your class who are not managers in your company).

Finally, this simulation will expose you to the benefits of cooperative teamwork in multifunctional teams. You will be teamed up with other students who will bring a variety of expertise to the table. By working together as a team, you will be able to gain insights and craft decisions that far exceed those which any member individually could have developed. Over the course of the session, you will improve your ability to work as a team and as a result, the quality of your decisions. Do not let the number of assignments each week scare you. Although there are five to seven assignments each week, the activities are not all graded and some of them take very little time. For example, Week 1 contains seven assignments, but three of them are non-graded and require only a short amount of time.

In Week 1, you will explore the importance of simulations in business education. You will learn about organization of teams and how to review the reports generated in the course simulation. You will also learn how to interpret the generated data to make better decisions.

In Week 2, you will learn about the two most important things that businesses deal with every daydemand forecasting and accrual accounting. You will also realize the importance of understanding and translating the accrual accounting system accurately. Further, you will learn how certain strategic decisions limit a firms future choices.

In Week 3, you will learn how firms form strategic groups. You will also study the importance of accurately forecasting demand and producing the three-year plan required in the course simulation. Further, you will learn the importance of different marketing strategies in the overall functional strategy of the simulation. You will study pricing, number of models, styling budgets, and delivery options in detail. You will also realize the importance of understanding the market in which a business operates and the key questions you will need to ask yourselves before you make certain marketing decisions.

In Week 4, you will learn that production is a key aspect of running a firm. You will also learn that all operating decisions must be aligned with marketing decisions and, therefore, with the overall competitive strategy of a firm. You will learn to make decisions on capital structure effects, use of different debt options, payment of dividends, and buying back stock. Finally, you will realize the importance of coordinating the production and marketing strategies of a firm.

In Week 5, you will learn the importance of balancing strategic and tactical decisions. You will also learn about the development of the industry and the firm.

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