Pharmasim Marketing Simulation
Back from a (working) vacation…
sometimes you ‘really’ can’t get away.
Just wrapped up the Pharmasim Marketing Simulation from Interpretive Software, Inc.We had to take the role of a brand manager in the over-the-counter cold medicine market and I’m happy to say our team ranked number one…. I’m not sure how much to weight the results as ‘true-to-life’ but after 8 periods we increased the stock price to $160.31/share, maintainted 29% of market share and had a (whopping) cumulative income of $1254M.
We went out two more periods to see how much more we could get “out of the market” and drove the stock price up to $209.03/share, cornered 31.3% of the market share and brought home the bacon with $1874M in cumulative income. As far as simulations go, I’m sure Donald Trump can take that to the bank.
Although the version of software we worked with had a clunky interface (think Visual Basic 4 – eeks, I hear there is a new web version in the works) it really had the muscle power to crank out the numbers and display the appropriate data. It was a great learning experience in how to effectively target channels, develop proper ad messages and anticipate customer demands and price sensitivities. The 4Ps (pricing, promotion, product and placement) were definitely being emphasized and we developed different strategies through each period to know when/what to reformulate and launch in terms of line extensions or new products. My team is available as consultants on a contingency basis and will gladly take payment by Visa, MC, Paypal or American Express – wink, wink, nudge, nudge. LOL.
I would have liked to been able to directly compete, in real-time, with other teams in the MBA program but overall it was a great learning experience both as a Marketing Management Simulation and a team building exercise for individuals with different backgrounds and personalities.
On a side note – although Pharmasim is really a marketing simulation and not a “game” it still would be great to see options available to bring in some of the harsher, real life tactics of large corporations – no pointing fingers, but negative ad-campaigns, hiring away of sales force or key executives from other companies, supply chain manipulation, et. al. Then teams could have both a market/stock price evaluation as well as a corporate PR “image” based on different types of strategies/tactics used coupled with market/consumer reaction to EPA/FDA/News inquiries released during the simulation. Similar to concepts brought out in the Red Storm software which I had an opportunity to beta-test back in the day – Ruthless.com.
This post is tagged: archives, business, channels, marketing, mba, red storm, ruthless, simulation