A Marketing Simulation

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• A Marketing Simulation
• Click your left mouse button to learn more about
  this exciting new simulation

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What is music2go?

• Students compete, individually or in teams, to
  make their company successful in a challenging
  simulation of consumer electronics marketing
  based on the US portable CD player market.
• With the aid of industry information and a
  substantial suite of detailed reports they make
  decisions relating to all four areas in the
  marketing mix
• Product design
• Pricing
• Promotion
• Place (Distribution)
• Students get hands on experience at making
  critical decisions and seeing the outcome in a
  live, interactive case study.

The companion simulation to Marketing 13th
Edition
Etzel, Walker, Stanton Pandit
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m2g Single-Player or Multi-Player
In the Single-Player simulation students compete
alone against a computer opponent.
In the Multi-Player simulation students compete
in teams, running identical firms against each
other live, via the internet.

• within ..
• 2 consumer market segments
• Standard
• Youth

• within ..
• 3 consumer market segments
• Standard
• Youth
• Sports

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• Single-Player?Multi-Player
• Click your left mouse button to progress through
  the Single-Player demo

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When music2go starts you will be able to see the
Select Firm Name screen. This is your
opportunity to change the name of your firm.
After the first decision period (one year) you
can not change your firm name again.
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The second decision tree item is the Year Ahead.
The first page of the report is a news update on
the scenario, explaining what it is that you
should be trying to achieve in music2go.
Pushing the right arrow takes you to the next
page.
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The Strategic Marketing Planning report gives you
a reminder of the key steps involved in
constructing a marketing plan and chapter
references for the Marketing textbook.
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Finally the Forecast Marketing Budget Expenditure
report shows you how much you spent last year and
how much you currently have available to spend
this year.
As you make decisions this report will update to
show you how much budget you still have available
to spend. This report is repeated in Forecast
Results
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The Industry Overview gives you reports detailing
what is happening in the m2g industry. The
first page of this report is a summary of the key
results and an explanation of what the other
reports are.
In m2g Single-Player you are competing against
EWS Audio and they start in a stronger market
position than you do.
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Pushing the down arrow allows you to select any
of the Industry Overview reports without having
to scroll through one by one.
For example if we select the Market Share report.
We will jump to that report.
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The Market Share report clearly shows that EWS
Audio is the dominant firm in the market.
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Firm Results gives you reports detailing the
financial performance of your firm. The first
page of this report is a summary of the key
results and an explanation of what the other
reports are.
Here you can see that your firm is failing to
meet its sales forecasts.
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We will investigate the failure to meet forecasts
further by jumping to the Net Marketing
Contribution report.
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The Net Marketing Contribution Report compares
our forecast with our actual result. From this
particular report you can see that the main
problem was that we failed to reach our sales
goals.
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The purchase Market Research decision screen is
still being worked on for the Fall release of
m2g. Students will have the opportunity to buy a
selection of market research reports from two
separate companies of varying quality and cost.
To ensure that you can still play this
pre-release version of m2g we have included a
market summary report on the second page.
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The All Product Details market summary report
shown below gives you key information about the
effectiveness of your promotional campaigns in
comparison to your competitor.
Note that EWS Audio is the only firm with a
product in the Youth market segment.
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Product Management gives you reports detailing
the performance of your products. The first
page of this report is a summary of the key
results and an explanation of what the other
reports are.
Here you can see that actual sales of your Sonic
product were approx 60 of your sales forecast.
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Highlight the Product Development tree item and
then click the sign to list all of your
products below it. The Product Development tree
item gives you reports that detail the design
characteristics and performance of your products.

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Here you can choose to continue with the current
design, update it (with a new design from below),
or abandon it.
Clicking your Sonic product will open its product
development decision screen
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Highlight the Price tree item and then click the
sign to list all of your products below it. The
Price tree item gives you reports that give
market information relating to pricing and
retailer margins.
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Here you can set your products retail price and
retail margin. You can also set your sales
forecast for each retail channel that you choose
to supply it to.
Clicking your Sonic product will open its pricing
decision screen
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Highlight the Advertising tree item and then
click the sign to list all of your products
below it. The Advertising tree item gives you
reports that give market information relating to
advertising.
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Here you can set your product Advertising
strategies and budgets. If you select a set
strategy such as growth then the computer will
automatically allocate your budget to the various
media types.
Clicking Product Strategy and Allocation will
open the Product Advertising Budgets decision
screen
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Here you can change to a custom advertising
strategy by setting your products media
allocation yourself.
Clicking your Sonic product will allow you to
evaluate the media allocation of the advertising
strategy that you have chosen.
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Selecting one of the media tabs opens its
sub-category allocation decision screen. E.g.
Radio and different types of radio station
formats.
Here you can change to a custom advertising
strategy by deciding how to split your
advertising budget between the various radio
station formats.
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Highlight the Sales Promotion tree item and then
click the sign to list all of your products
below it. The Sales Promotion tree item gives you
reports that give market information relating to
sales promotion.
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Here you can set your product Sales Promotion
strategies and budgets. If you select a set
strategy such as growth then the computer will
automatically allocate your budget to the various
sales promotion activities
Clicking Product Strategy and Allocation will
open the product Sales Promotion Budgets decision
screen
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Here you can change to a custom sales promotion
strategy by deciding how to split your budget
between the various sales promotion activities
available.
Clicking your Sonic product will allow you to
evaluate the sales promotion activity budgets of
the sales promotion strategy that you have chosen.
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The Product Management tree item gives you
reports detailing the performance of your
products. The first page of this report is a
summary of the key results and an explanation of
what the other reports are.
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Here you can make your Sales Force Management
decision for each retail channel. You need to
decide how many sales reps to employ and how much
their salary package will be for each retail
channel, e.g. consumer electronics.
Clicking Sales Force Management will open its
decision screen.
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Here you must decide how much inventory you want
for each of your products. If you believe your
sales forecasts are accurate then take your
forecast sales units, subtract your existing
inventory and order the difference leaving an
expected closing inventory of zero.
Clicking Inventory Management will open its
decision screen.
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The Forecast Results tree item gives you reports
detailing the forecast financial performance of
your firm for next year based on the decisions
that you have entered. The first page of this
report is a summary of the key results and an
explanation of what the other reports are.
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You should always check your Budget Expenditure
report before processing your decisions
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The Forecast Marketing Budget Expenditure report
shows you how much you spent last year and how
much you currently have available to spend this
year.
As you make decisions this report will update to
show you how much budget you still have available
to spend.
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DECISION TIME

• Now that you have had a tour of the decisions and
  reports available it is time to show you a sample
  decision

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We will start by checking how many of each
product actually sold in each retail channel last
year. Rounding to the nearest 100K the answers
are 600K, 500K and 500K.
Clicking your Sonic product will open its pricing
decision screen
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We will now update our sales forecast for each
retail channel with our rounded estimates based
on last years sales.
We save our changes by pushing the apply button.
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We now decide to order 1,600,000 units which is
the exact amount of our sales forecast. This
leaves some safety stock in case we have
underestimated demand.
Clicking Inventory Management will open its
decision screen.
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We decide to check our forecast results based on
our changed sales forecast and inventory order.
After seeing that we are forecast to improve
sales by 5 and Net Marketing Contribution by 9
we decide to rollover (process) our decision.
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Pushing the Rollover button closes the decision
screens and brings up the screen below.
Pushing OK will process our decision, pushing
cancel takes us back to the decision screens.
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Unfortunately our sales decreased by 10 instead
of our forecast 5 growth and Net Marketing
Contribution decreased 21 instead of our
forecast 8 growth.
After the rollover we decide to check our results.
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Opening up the Product Development tree item we
see that we now have the option to launch another
product. However we decide to rollback to the
previous year to try changing more marketing
decisions.
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Pushing the Rollback button closes the decision
screens and brings up the screen below.
Pushing OK will process our decision to rollback
to last year, pushing cancel takes us back to
this years decision screens.
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Now try playing m2g yourself. The first time you
play it is best to take 15 to 30 minutes to go
through all of the screens that you have just
been shown so that you learn what information you
have available to you. We also suggest only
making a few decisions to begin with and then
rolling forward to see the effects and then
rolling back to improve them. This incremental
approach will allow you to quickly gain an
understanding of the underlying m2g simulation
model and its sensitivities.
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• A Marketing Simulation