Pricing Simulation: Universal Rental Car “How to Play” Audio Script In this simulation, you are the newly appointed District Manager for Universal Rental Car in Florida. Your mission is to develop a pricing strategy for the region in order to improve performance. You’ll set weekday and weekend prices for your rental car inventory in three cities in the Florida region. When you first login, the Prepare section provides you with basic information on Universal Rental Car and how the simulation works. Note that there is a downloadble pdf file you can print if you’d like a reference guide on how to play. The Analyze section presents numerous sources of information to help you make your pricing decisions each month. The Dashboard Overview provides a high level view of your market share, unit sales, capacity utilization, and fleet size in each of the cities you’re managing. You’re competing against one competitor, shown here in gray. Note that the simulation starts in October, but you are given three months of historical data to review. As district manager, you need to make monthly pricing decisions over the course of the next simulated year. On the right of the screen you’ll always see the Decide panel. Here you can enter your weekday and weekend prices for each of your cities. You’ll also be able to move cars between cities once every three months. In order to make your pricing decisions, review the details in the Analyze subscreens. The Price History screen shows both your price history and your competitor’s price history. On any of these Analyze screens, you can toggle between “view graphs” and “view data.” The data view shows you the same information in tabular form. Clicking on “copy to clipboard” will paste the data on your computer’s clipboard for copying into your spreadsheet program of choice, most typically Excel. Next, the Market Demand screen tracks both the overall market size, as well as how you and your competitor split the market. The dotted lines track forecasted demand based on expected seasonality shifts. . The Unit Sales screen shows unit sales for both Universal and your competitor mapped against the price in each month. Fleet Size tracks any changes you make to the fleet size over the course of the simulation. You’ll be able to redistribute your inventory across cities, but you can’t increase the overall size of your fleet. Capacity Utilization tracks how much of your capacity you actually use over the course of the simulation, as well as your monthly orders. The Market Research screen gives you detailed information about how your customers are broken out between cities. Each bar chart shows you both weekday and weekend rentals for business and leisure customers. The graphs below show weekday vs. weekend market share for both you and your competitor. This screen also contains a view of your competitor’s income statement for the current month. Net Income can be viewed in a variety of ways, including Per Vehicle Per Month, Per Rented Vehicle, or by Percentages. You can also sort by city or see the aggregate view of your entire Florida region. While this page shows only the last three months played, you can copy the complete data set to your clipboard if you’d like to see all months in the simulation. Finally, the breakeven calculator allows you to experiment with changes in pricing to see how these might affect your revenue or volume. The breakeven change in volume shows the change in unit sales resulting from a change in price that would keep total contribution constant. When you’re ready to set your prices for the month, enter them on the right and click “Advance to the Next Month.” The simulation will advance and you’ll see how your decisions played out in next month. You’ll do this for every month until you reach the end of the year. When you have completed the simulation, you can view your results on the Debrief screen. Here you will see your final month’s profit, your cumulative results for the year, and an explanation of how well you did in relation to other players. The Debrief also explains some of the key factors that determined your performance in the simulation – factors that are critical to consider in real‐world pricing decisions. Finally, the Debrief screen shows other valuable resources that will add to your knowledge and understanding of pricing strategy. Now you’re ready to go! Good luck with your pricing strategy!