Errors and mistakes take us on the journey from inexperience to wisdom. However, in real business scenarios making mistakes involve very high stakes, it can result in loss of a deal, loss of a customer or even loss of the Job! Industrat, the Strategic Industrial Marketing Simulation was a stepping stone to give us an opportunity to learn from mistakes, to practice the theory we learnt in a virtual scenario!! Moreover, we simulated 9 long years in a week’s time.
For Industrat simulation, PGPM class was divided into 4 industries such as Trees, Fruits, Flowers and Birds. And, there were 5 companies within each industry. The companies were allocated specific marketing budget and were responsible for marketing, R&D and HR decisions. Next year’s marketing budget depended on company’s performance in previous year specifically on market share, stock price and contribution margin.
Initial years were bit confusing and we took some time to understand research reports and customer perception map. As the years passed on, our understanding evolved. Most of us decided our target segments and started placing new products. Environment became competitive yet collaborative, complex yet enjoyable and virtual yet real! Collaboration between rivals to develop new technologies, enthusiasm to know previous year’s performance and hurry to take right but timely decision made our industrat journey intense and full of excitement.
Talking specifically about our company ‘Rose’, we had some of the best products and we also came up with the new product ‘KISS’ which had a strategic position on perception map. Initially we concentrated on market share in terms of volume and ignored value, did not take into account inflation our margins depleted. In the later session, we had a strategic alliance with other team and launched a new product “LIFE”, well Life did give us life and in the end we were the second best company in our industry.
Over all, the experienced enhanced analytical skills, decision making power and business acumen of the participants. Industrat was followed by Capstone simulation, which seemed a logical extension to our previous learning and broadened the scope to include finance, operations and strategy.
–Posted by Kosha Joshi, Class of 2010
Good one Kosha, you have really penned down the entire experience.