...We are team Baldwin, and we used two main strategies while playing Capsim. We focused on being broad cost leaders, and we were aggressive. During the practice rounds, we did not do well because of our lack of knowledge of the simulation and also did not really take the time to make appropriate decisions. When the real decisions started, we wanted to be broad cost leaders; dominant in all segments of the market, which included: Baker, Bead, Bid, Bold and Buddy. We were profitable, because we were competing against the other teams in all segments of the market. For this reason, we were able to compete against everyone and had captured 25.75% of the market share at the end of decision six. Additionally, we used an aggressive strategy; one of the ways in which we were aggressive was by taking on short-term debt. This strategy was more risky because we depended on sales to repay debt. If our sales forecasts had been wrong and we had not sold as much as we wanted, our team would have not been profitable because we would have not been capable of paying our short-term debt. Due to the lack of team communication, we forgot to confirm our decision so the computer made the decision for us. As a team, we met and discussed exactly how we wanted to come back from the first decision. We decided to read the manual and make sure that each of us knew exactly how the simulation worked. Furthermore, we discovered that the simulation provided different strategies on how to play the game. We utilized...
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...General strategy: Be aggressive as it’s a zero-sum game. I think the first pitfall comes from teams who listen to the professor and treat it as a friendly competition, or take the advice to be a quality niche player. It’s possible to take over the market and grab every segment, which has the benefit of choking revenue from other companies while making yours look better. Since you’re trying to be first, your scorecard will establish the class curve and automatically give your team an A. Yes, for probably the only opportunity you will have in college, you receive an A by lowering the grades of your fellow classmates. Enjoy the ride. Round 1: Borrow long term debt to the hilt, and issue max stock and you should have around $56 million to play with. You’ll zoom ahead of your classmates as they’re too timid to fully commit and go all-in. College students in their early twenties have this misconception that low debt is a good thing, probably because they’ve been traumatized by student loans. Companies use debt for positive things such as growth and plant investment, similar to homeowners who take on a mortgage or take out equity on their home; it shouldn’t be seen as a bad thing. Before starting your practice rounds, read your capstone student guide a couple times to familiarize yourself with the game. It’s a desperate situation when you try to intuit or “feel” your way through the game. We had a few teams who didn’t do the research and lost their shirts. Remember what it felt...
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...eventually become obsolete. We will measure our performance in terms of Stock Price, ROE and ROS. Environmental Analysis: Electronic sensors are used in a wide variety of industries and applications and are in constant need of modifications to meet customer demands. The customers usually like to purchase smaller sensors with higher performance, especially so in the High Tech Market. In the Low Tech Market, larger, slower sensors are the customer’s choice. A sensor is a device that will sense a change, such as in atmospheric pressure, that will then change voltage and transmit the information to another device such as a thermometer. After much research, Sensors, Inc. decided to enter this market and with the use of specialized software, Capsim ® Simulation, make critical decisions about R&D,...
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...following RMIT web site has resources that can assist your team with assistance on how to structure a report – go to: http://emedia.rmit.edu.au/learninglab/content/assessment-tasks Select ‘Reports’ to review and obtain help resources. The total word length of the report is 2,000 words. This limit means that you need to consider carefully what you include, and only use the most relevant and appropriate data and explanations. It is expected that you will provide appropriate tables, graphs and charts and careful use of them can save you many valuable words. Appendices are another way of providing detailed information if required, as appendices are not included in the word count. While you are expected to read and consider the advice in the Capsim guide during the semester, you must not copy text, graphs, tables and charts from this guide and include it in this report. We require that this assessment is written in your own...
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...NORTH- HOLLAND Marketing Orientation and Company Performance Industrial vs. C o n s u m e r G o o d s C o m p a n i e s George J. Avlonitis Spiros P. Gounaris Marketing orientation, still an intriguing concept for man),, carries the pledge of superior company performance through the satisfaction of customer's needs. This article draws conclusions from an empirical investigation showing that this relationship does really exist and, in the case of industrial markets, building a marketing orientation it is indeed a significant contributor to the company's performance. © 1997 Elsevier Science Inc. INTRODUCTION Recent studies [1-3] have tried to collect empirical evidence to investigate whether the adoption of marketing Address correspondence to Dr. George J. Avlonitis, Athens University of Economics and Business, Department of Management Science and Marketing, 76 Patission Str., Athens 104 34. Greece. orientation leads to better performance in the market. However, the way that marketing orientation is conceptualized tends to differ. For instance, while Hooley, Lynch, and Shepherd [1] conceptualized marketing orientation as a set of specific beliefs that form a certain company attitude/culture, Narver and Slater [2], as well as Kohli and Jaworski [3], explained the concept as a certain behavior. Furthermore, most of the available empirical investigations of the association between marketing orientation and company performance tend to draw general conclusions about...
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...Mkt 350 In a classroom far, far away, four people were thrust into a group. Their goal was to succeed in the game known as Capsim. They called themselves Digby 2. This is the real life story of their friendship, challenges, and accomplishments as they worked their way to the top of the game. On a more serious note, our group took Capsim very seriously. In the beginning we were all confused as to how the game worked and where to begin. We looked at the various tutorials and the booklet to try and make some sense of it. Once we had some understanding, we tried to develop our strategy. In the first few rounds we understood it was important to have our company funded through stocks and long term debt. We issued stock the first three rounds and took out enough current and long term debt to get our company up and running. We also chose to not issue dividends as it would cost our company too much in its growth stage. In addition, we made sure to create new products in the earlier rounds, as it would become more expensive in the later rounds. Once we had created all of our products, we used the Foundation FastTrack to help us determine our optimal position within the low and high tech markets. We also used this to look at where our competitors were and what they were charging for similar products. Our strategy consisted of putting a lot of money into the Sales and Promo budget in the initial rounds so that we could increase customer awareness and accessibility. As...
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...We are team Baldwin, and we used two main strategies while playing Capsim. We focused on being broad cost leaders, and we were aggressive. During the practice rounds, we did not do well because of our lack of knowledge of the simulation and also did not really take the time to make appropriate decisions. When the real decisions started, we wanted to be broad cost leaders; dominant in all segments of the market, which included: Baker, Bead, Bid, Bold and Buddy. We were profitable, because we were competing against the other teams in all segments of the market. For this reason, we were able to compete against everyone and had captured 25.75% of the market share at the end of decision six. Additionally, we used an aggressive strategy; one of the ways in which we were aggressive was by taking on short-term debt. This strategy was more risky because we depended on sales to repay debt. If our sales forecasts had been wrong and we had not sold as much as we wanted, our team would have not been profitable because we would have not been capable of paying our short-term debt. Due to the lack of team communication, we forgot to confirm our decision so the computer made the decision for us. As a team, we met and discussed exactly how we wanted to come back from the first decision. We decided to read the manual and make sure that each of us knew exactly how the simulation worked. Furthermore, we discovered that the simulation provided different strategies on how to play the game. We utilized...
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...Memo To: President, J.P. Wilkins From: Zhenyu Fang Date: October 15, 2013. Subject: The electronic sensor industry structure with the initial competing strategy. Dear President, Sir. J.P. Wilkins I am writing this because I want to give you a brief introduction of the electronic sensor industry that our company is currently competing and the initial business strategy my team has chosen. The sensor industry consists two market segments, the low technology and high technology. They share the same buying criteria, which are product’s price, age, reliability and performance/size. However, the customers within the each segment employ different standards as they evaluate products. From the most concerned aspect to the least concerned in the low-tech market, they are product’s price, age, reliability and performance/size. For the same order in high-tech market, they are product’s performance/size, age, price and reliability. It is worth to mention that there is an overlap area between the segments, as the entire market matures over time, the overlap area decreases. This is due to the higher growth rate of the high-tech segment when it compares to the low-tech segment. To wrap this up, we can say that customers seek proven products at a modest price in the low-tech market, while customers seek cutting-edge technology in performance/size and new designs in the high-tech market. Base on my team’s research and forecast of the current market, we have decided to approach the market...
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...Steven Hobbs Accounting 439 Assignment 8 11272870 9-47: A. In expecting that an audit client’s performance should be similar to a competitor, it is important to evaluate the prior year’s performance, and the competitor’s performance for that year. If the industry is in a high growth phase, or if it is a period of decline in the industry, the client should have similar results to its competitor. If the results differ, it should be investigated as to what caused the disparity. In this situation, the accounts receivable balance is a good example of this. In the prior year, the client had an AR of 3.3, and the year before an AR of 2.3, an increase of 44%, and to the current year an increase of 106% to 6.8, that coupled with the competitor’s balance of 4.2 it a serious red flag. B. Some of the unexpected results such as higher A/R, lower sales, and higher number of days sales in ending inventory and number of days sales in receivables could be a large volume of sales at deep discounts. By selling a large volume at a discount, accounts receivable would increase, inventory would increase in anticipation of large volume sales, and days sales in receivables would increase as a result as well. C. In determining the accuracy and validity of the data, one would inspect source documents and recalculate/reperform the client’s calculations. D. In order to embezzle cash, the CFO could increase inventory levels on paper and establish a false vendor to pay for the nonexistent goods....
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...CAPSIM Summary Plan Reflection on Practice Round 1. Team’s Overall Performance My team has a varied performance during all the practice rounds. The practice rounds have really assisted me in understanding the relationships between business strategies, tactics. Initially, I came to the assumption that I wanted to really focus in the areas of Performance, Size, and High End. I ended up with a lot of debt, around 100,000+. I tried this in the practice rounds and this has helped me in learning the key strategies to go further. My goal was to just slightly undercut each of our competitors with price since we felt that it may be a differentiating factor for our customers. I ended up changing our strategy significantly. I tried to continue the Broad Cost Strategy to maintain the presence in both the segments but had to modify it based on the moves of the competitors. Also I maintained a profit of $1,029,408 with a cumulative profits of $2,114,487. I had more of recruiting cost which depleted the performance. 2. The intended strategy I wanted to gain a competitive advantage by keeping R&D, production and material costs to a minimum, enabling it to compete on the basis of price. My strategy was to implement the Cost Leader with Product Lifecycle Focus. I was able to launch two products by the end of all the five rounds. Although I could not perform very well with the stocks, I tried to clear my debts. I could not gain the market share although, I was able to...
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...eventually become obsolete. We will measure our performance in terms of Stock Price, ROE and ROS. Environmental Analysis: Electronic sensors are used in a wide variety of industries and applications and are in constant need of modifications to meet customer demands. The customers usually like to purchase smaller sensors with higher performance, especially so in the High Tech Market. In the Low Tech Market, larger, slower sensors are the customer’s choice. A sensor is a device that will sense a change, such as in atmospheric pressure, that will then change voltage and transmit the information to another device such as a thermometer. After much research, Sensors, Inc. decided to enter this market and with the use of specialized software, Capsim ® Simulation, make critical decisions about R&D, Marketing, Production,...
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...1. Per calcolare l’ideal spot considerando di avere il centro del segmento e la distanza dal centro dell’ideal spot: | Center | Offset | Ideal Spot | Pfmn : | 3.0 | - 0.8 | = 2.2 | Size : | 17.0 | 0.8 | = 17.8 | 2. Per calcolare la domanda dell’anno successivo: domanda corrente x (1+tasso di crescita) | First Shift Capacity | First and Second Shift Capacity | Automation Level | Company | Found under "Capacity Next Round" | Capacity Next Round x 2 (shifts) | Found under "Automation Next Round" | Industry | Total the capacity of each product in that segment | Total capacity of each product in that segment X 2 | | 3. Production costs Activity Cost to double capacity | Cost to raise automation to 10 | Increasing capacity is $6 per unit with an adjustment for automation. | Increasing automation is per unit of capacity | Formula is:First Shift Capacity x [$6 + ($4 x automation level)] Example Input: 500 | Formula is:First Shift Capacity x [$4 x (10 - automation level)] Example Input: 700 | | | 4. Calculating margins Activity Useful formulas: Contribution Margin($) = Price -_ (Material Cost + Labor Cost) Margin Percentage (%) = Contribution Margin/Price 5. Determining Margin Potential Finding the maximum amount of profit you can get from one unit of a product is called Margin Potential. It’s useful for a company when making a decision about whether to go into production or not. In it’s simplest form, it is calculated as: ...
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...Over the course of this Capsim simulation, my group learned lots about the inner workings of a business. The knowledge that we gained throughout the eight rounds of the simulation helped us to be successful in the simulation itself, and it will help us to be successful and well prepared for work in business in the real world. Capsim has greatly expanded my knowledge about the communication and cooperation that it takes for companies to be successful. Throughout the Capsim simulation, our group was adamant about communicating with each other. The practice round of Capsim taught us that communicating with each other is vital in order for everybody to be on the same page. Our group split up the roles amongst different people in the group, so...
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...1. Initial Strategy The initial strategy was to maintain a competitive presence in each segment by keeping our prices aligned with the average for each target market, while maintaining costs low. Specifically, it was our goal to become the leader in Traditional and low-end segments of the sensor business by allocating significant resources to R&D, marketing and promotions for these products. Our differentiator would be the result of a high investment in R&D to ensure our products were the best available. The board decided that the company should be judged on its ability to make a profit, gain market share, provide positive ROA and make money for our shareholders with an increasing stock price. Our target was a stock price of $38 by year 6, with an increase in profit and ROA year-over-year. The complete Strategy Statement is attached as Appendix A. 2. A description of the strategic decisions made over time The team decided to focus primarily on Low-End and Traditional products because the majority of the market demand was in these two categories. We believed that if we could maintain a prominent presence in these two sectors we would be able to be successful. In order to gain a larger market share we moved products from the Performance and Size segments into Low End and Traditional, thereby doubling our presence within these markets. It was our belief that these products would then be cheaper to maintain from an R&D standpoint and have more potential to...
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...Memorandum To: J.P. Wilkins, President From: Date: [ 05/11/2013 ] Re: Proposed Direction of the Company Introduction I am writing this memo as a member of the Andrews management team to notify you of the developments made on a preliminary business strategy that we are anticipating to be both successful and exciting. The sensor industry has experienced increasing product demand recently, as well as a universal desire for smaller and faster sensors in both the low and high tech market segments. Through the conduction of an external analysis, we have identified five major competitors within this industry, all sharing a similar control of suppliers and buyers to our company. The main goal of our strategy is to gain an advantage over other industry competitors in order to produce a successful business while consistently keeping customers satisfied. Internal/ External Analysis By performing a SWOT analysis, the company’s management team was able to identify the industry structure and the current market environment. This allowed for identification of the company’s internal strengths and weaknesses as well as our external opportunities and threats. From an internal perspective, our company’s management team is intuitive, intelligent, and hard-working. Although our team lacks extensive business experience, we believe that our resourcefulness and diligence will provide us with an opportunity to be successful in the sensor industry. Externally, several potential opportunities...
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