Period 2

We rank 4th this period. From the newsletters and market research studies it became evident that our competitors are investing huge portions of their budget on R&D. Specifically, last period’s winner (Team I) is spending a huge amount of money on R&D and is doing really well. The competition is getting fierce. We cannot afford to delay our R&D decisions and must modify our products as soon as possible in order to keep up with the frantic pace.

As for our current products, it’s exciting to know that our production department is getting more efficient — they produced significantly more than we requested, and the good news is we sold out everything. Increased marketing efforts were definitely helpful in boosting our sales. Our profits grew by $10 million this period.

To everyone’s surprise, Team A launched a new product (SASS) this period and it entirely captured the Buffs market. In such a competitive environment, we believe the best strategy to pursue is differentiation from our competitors. Our Board of Directors have agreed to launch a new product (SOBO) which will be very similar to SASS but with a significantly lower price; the aim for SOBO will be to capture lost share in the Buffs market. Together, coupled with more aggressive advertising expenditure, we are hiring more salespeople to help promote and sell this brand new product. In addition, the added sales force should help to increase sales for our existing SOLD and SONO products to their respective target markets.


We know that we will have to continue to strategize with the future in mind in order to succeed. We are ordering a feasibility study on our PSONY project which is going to be a brand new product targeted towards Singles in the long run. Next period, we will use the finished R&D project, PSOLI, to modify SOLD and better target it to the Others market. We are also altering the MDS dimensions of our current products to help better target them towards their respective target markets. In the long run, we are planning to enter the Vodite market to gain possible first-mover advantage; in anticipation of entering this new market we are ordering some Vodite market research studies.