Running head: CAPSIM ROUND 1 ANALYSIS
Capsim Round 1 Analysis
Trevor D. Rasmusson
American Sentinel University
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CAPSIM ROUND 1 ANALYSIS
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Capsim Round 1 Analysis
Team Digby went into round one as the underdogs. Our team did not perform well, at
all, in the practice rounds. This was mainly due to a large emergency loan that was needed to
fund excess costs. When we entered all of our decisions, I think we may have not saved the
financial portion and therefore the loan money did not go through. However, we learned some
valuable lessons through the practice round and was able to go into Round 1 with more clarity on
what exactly was going to be needed to do well with the simulation.
Carmen and I had quite a few live discussions on what we really wanted to focus on with
this simulation. We came to the conclusion that we wanted to really focus in the areas of
Performance, Size, High End and Traditional. We didn’t want to work toward pleasing every
category and then have to share those markets with the other teams. By selecting some key areas
to focus in, we will have the ability to be a bit more aggressive with the moves that we make
because we will have more money to dedicate toward product development, production and
marketing for those key sensors.
In the practice round, we were a bit too aggressive in some areas; so much so that we
were $50,000+ in debt when we got to the Financial Decisions page. In retrospect, I’m glad that
we tried this approach in the practice round. This gave us a good gage for how aggressive we
could be when making decisions for Round 1.
Similarly to our strategy in the practice round, we wanted to give each product a rating
according to its current levels of Performance, Size and Age. We categorized Dell in the low
category, and therefore this would be a product that we would not focus too much energy in.
Daze and Dune were categorized as Medium. Dixie and Dot were categorized as High level
products. We made the decision, that Daze would be our highest performing product. This is
CAPSIM ROUND 1 ANALYSIS
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due to the fact that we were able to plot Daze in an area that would incorporate the outer circles
of 3 segments (High-end; Performance; Size) while being in the “sweet-spot” of the traditional
segment. Our second highest performing product, we anticipated will be Dixie. We were able to
plot this sensor so that it would incorporate the outer circles of 2 segments (Traditional;
Performance) while being close to the “sweet-spot” in the High-end category.
When it came to the promotional and sales portion of the simulation, we wanted to plan
to have considerably larger budgets in promotions due to the fact that our customers really don’t
know about our products yet. As we move through the various rounds of the simulation, we
plan for the sales budget to grow gradually. About halfway through the simulation, we would
like our sales budget to equal our promotional budget. The rounds that follow will see that the
sales budget will surpass the marketing budget so that our products are more accessible to our
customers. We did not venture too far from the default pricing, with exception to Dell. We
raised that price quite a bit due to the fact that we were trying to focus in the High-end markets.
Team Digby set-up our production decisions based, again, on the key products that we
wanted to focus on while trying to keep our costs down. We know that Daze will be our highest
selling product and therefore planned generously for that with the capacity and automation
rating. Due to the fact that this is just round one, and Dell will still be in the pocket for the Lowend, we have planned to sell-out in that area as well. However, this will likely not be the case in
the future. We hope that Dot will be our second-highest performing product at some point, so
we are using this round to prepare for that a little bit in regards to capacity and automation.
Ultimately we have aligned all of our products in a diagonal line to follow the route of
the simulation over the next few rounds. As we get further into the simulation, we anticipate
having to alter this strategy slightly based on how much of the markets we are having to share
CAPSIM ROUND 1 ANALYSIS
with the other teams. We are much more optimistic this round due to a clarity in our
understanding.
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