Starting out I must say that the game itself was a little stressful juggling all the little constraints and small changes to price etc. It wasn't the easiest thing to just jump into but i feel like i got some idea of what was going on. My team worked well together, but our ranking was always second to last (at least we weren't last).
As far as strategy goes I think we just struggled to keep the company afloat. Analyzing the market for the drinks, we realized that things were selling better than others. Once we were able to control what amounts of certain products were sold I feel that we were more confident and felt more control. One thing about selecting quantities is that if you supply less than other distributors, they might find a niche with the lower selling product.
The game ranking was based on profit, this is definitely good and prove that the company is making the most money, but we also have to look at the margins. One thing i noticed about my group is that we spent way too much on marketing, almost double that of other groups. I'm pretty sure it is because we just forgot, but this affects profit because of the unnecessary spending made in the company day to day. In this game and in business i think that there is a lot to consider. I realized that the business had to work like a team, there were inputs that had to be made and changed constantly. Since there was a lot to consider, you would need a sales strategy, and good business/money management. As far as our strengths, we ended up deciding and delegating jobs, but there wasn't much time to do it perfectly. The worst thing we did was just not realize all of our costs involved, and no matter how much we made we were still spending too much.
I definitely learned that having a business includes so much, to make the most of your money you need to be on the ball. Considering the large scale of the beverage industry in Germany we dealt with it is easy to watch profit go up in down. You must pay attention to spending and realize where your money is going.
I agree completely with the fact that businesses MUST pay attention to spending and realize where the money is going because like we found out by looking at other groups, money invested in areas they shouldn't be like marketing can really hurt profit.
ReplyDeleteI agree the game started out very stressful dealing with all the prices and marketing and everything. I also agree with paying attention to spending because my team spent way too much on marketing and it really effected our results.
ReplyDeleteI agree that in business, you must watch where your money is going. This game should that concentrating solely on one aspect of a business, leaves all other areas vulnerable, which could result in a lack of sales and revenue. Overall, I think the game was pretty good although I think we could have all benefited from a better understanding of the game from the beginning.
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