Markstrat

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Introduction

Markstrat is the product name of an educational business simulation environment, more precisely a strategy marketing simulation. It is developed an distributed by StratX. Its Strategic marketing simulation with Markstrat web page (retrieved April3, 2019) describes the product in the following terms: “Markstrat is a marketing simulation software which offers MBA students and professionals a risk-free platform in order to test theories and make decisions. StratX founder, Jean-Claude Larréché, developed MarkStrat on the simple theory: if you give MBA students a way to apply under real market conditions the theory they learned during their lessons, they will not only devote more energy but will also learn from their mistakes and successes alike.”

According to Kinnear & Klammer (1987) [1], it can be used both as and educational tool to teach an array of marketing skills and as a tool to conduct experimental studies. It also can be used as assessment tool.

According to Ikeda et al. (2015) [2] “Participants take a series of marketing decisions implementing concepts such as segmentation and positioning, consumer behavior, marketing mix (4 P’s), and marketing research. Moreover students have to analyze and interpret data in order to acquire more and better market knowledge about customers and competitors. Students use Markstrat information and scenario to develop a Marketing plan. After presenting the plan for one year they start the simulation and take decisions for a long term result (commonly, 7 or 8 rounds)”

History

Markstraat was founded by Insead professor Jean-Claude Larréché. It has been developed since the late 1997. As of April 2019 the current version is Markstrat 7.

According to [ Wikipedia], “Between 1974 and 1977, working with an assistant, Hubert Gatignon, he developed his work on marketing modelling to create a teaching simulation called Markstrat (Mazur & Miles 2007, p. 50). Markstrat is a game where teams of students compete against each other in an artificial world under realistic market conditions. [3] It is claimed that Markstrat is now used in 8 out of the top 10 business schools in the world and 25 of the top 30 schools in the US.”

In 1987, Kinnear and Klammer (p. 491) [1] describe the Markstrat simulation environment as follows: “Markstrat is a marketing-strategy simulation game in which five firms compete against each other. This competition is based upon the utilization of the classic marketing variables: product development and management, distribution, promotion, and price. Decision makers in competing firms utilize marketing research studies and develop strategies based upon effective segmentation and positioning. Their performance in the game is based upon such measures as market share, sales, contribution margin, and return on marketing investment. In many respects, then, it is a classic strategic marketing situation that a real-world manager would face.”

Markstrat 7

Educational benefits and conditions

A number of educational benefits are expected from simulations like Markstart. We can distinguish motivational aspects (enthusiasm, engagement), development of general and metacognitive skills (awareness of skills, strategy development, time management, decision making, team work, problem solving), concept learning (develop core marketing principles) and transfer (bridging the gap between theory and practice). Asiri et al. (2017), in a literature review that maps expected employability skills with simulation features conclude that employability skills can be improved using business simulation games.

Some studies are target specifically the Markstrat environment. Already decades ago, Haskell and Taylor (1985) [4] report that “that participants' confidence in applying learned marketing concepts and tools to real-world situations increases significantly due to participation in the simulation.”

Sharif & Ranchhod (2009:8) [5] postulated that the “Markstrat simulation represents one of the most effective ways to confront students with real-life business situations, offering them the possibility to apply their theoretical knowledge, to interact with other people, and to take responsibilities for implementing business decisions. All these aspects of the Markstrat exercise determine the development of essential skills, at theoretical, practical, individual and inter-personal levels.” A user-based survey of undergraduate students somewhat corroborated this position: “The survey responses found that on average most students viewed the business simulation game experience as “somewhat” effective, being slightly higher than average on the ordinal Likert scale of 1-7 (with a dataset average of 5.22 across the sample of 210 students). The remainder of the descriptive statistics highlighted a positive view on how the students understood core marketing, strategy, operations management and macro-economic principles (such as those relating to pricing, customer satisfaction etc) –and the fact that the simulation itself afforded a “safe” environment to take pseudo-business risks with a level of immersion which the students also found to be conducive to learning.”

A number of publications investigate under which conditions, a simulation is effective. For example:

Focus should be on learning, not gaming (Doyle and Brown 2000)[6].

Learning with a business simulation like Markstrat takes time. Redmond (1989) [7] finds that “The effective lower boundary for MBA students using Markstrat appears to be five periods”, i.e. students have to complete five full cycles.

Business simulations seem to be effective when learners expect to perform well. Caruna et al (2016) [8] report that Performance Expectancy and Effort Expectancy drive Learner Satisfaction, which in turn is related to Recalled Performance.

Markstrat as research medium

The environment can be used to conduct a variety of research, e.g. in behavioral economics or learning psychology.

For example, Lukas et al. (2016) [9] argue, based on a simulation using Markstrat, that organizational performance feedback influences individual decision-maker cognitions and thereby changes a team’s attention focus in terms of strategy.

Pathak and Lim (2016) [10] use a Markstrat simulation to study (1) how do performance-linked rewards influence the decision making styles of marketing managers who have to be innovative in dealing with competition and (2) whether the promise of attractive performance-linked rewards helps or hinders performance of a marketing unit.

Links

Bibliography

Cited with footnotes

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Kinnear, T. C., & Klammer, S. K. (1987). Management perspectives on Markstrat: The GE experience and beyond. Journal of Business Research, 15(6), 491-501. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0148296387900348
  2. ↑ Ikeda A.A., Campomar M.B., Campomar M.C. (2015) Using Simulator Markstrat in Marketing Planning Courses in Brazil. In: Dato-on M. (eds) The Sustainable Global Marketplace. Developments in Marketing Science: Proceedings of the Academy of Marketing Science. Springer, Cham
  3. ↑ Oliver Meixner & Rainer Haas, “Markstrat Simulation: Distance Learning for Marketing Students”, Paper presented at the 6th Annual EDEN Conference – Budapest, June 1997, http://www.boku.ac.at/mi/markstrat/artikel.html
  4. ↑ Haskell, N. A., & Taylor, J. R. (2015). The Knowledge-Related Confidence Effects of a Marketing Simulation Game. In Proceedings of the 1985 Academy of Marketing Science (AMS) Annual Conference (pp. 130-132). Springer, Cham.
  5. ↑ Sharif, Amir M. & Ranchhod, Ashok. 2009. "Using the markstrat business simulation to develop strategic management behaviours".European and Mediterranean Conference on Information Systems. http://bura.brunel.ac.uk/handle/2438/4233
  6. ↑ Doyle, Declan & Brown, F. William. 2000. "Using a business simulation to teach applied skills – the ben-efits and the challenges of using student teams from multiple countries". Journal of European Industrial Training 24 (6), pp. 330-336.
  7. ↑ Redmond, W. H. (1989). On the Duration of Simulations: An Exploration of Minimum Effective Length. Journal of Marketing Education, 11(1), 53-57.
  8. ↑ Caruana, A., La Rocca, A., & Snehota, I. (2016). Learner satisfaction in marketing simulation games: Antecedents and influencers. Journal of Marketing Education, 38(2), 107-118.
  9. ↑ Lucas, G. J., Zijlmans, M. H., Meeus, M. T., & Blettner, D. P. (2016). The Effect of Organizational Performance Feedback on Team Attention Focus. In Uncertainty and Strategic Decision Making (pp. 171-190). Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
  10. ↑ Abhishek Pathak & Lewis K S Lim, 2016. "Marketing Decision Making Behavior under the Influence of Attractive Performance-linked Rewards," International Journal of Business Administration, International Journal of Business Administration, Sciedu Press, vol. 7(3), pages 81-90, May.

Other

  • Cook, V. J. (1987). Introduction to strategic studies in Markstrat. Journal of Business Research, 15(6), 467-468.
  • Green, D. H., & Ryans, A. B. (1990). Entry strategies and market performance causal modeling of a business simulation. Journal of Product Innovation Management: AN INTERNATIONAL PUBLICATION OF THE PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT & MANAGEMENT ASSOCIATION, 7(1), 45-58.
  • Ikeda, A. A., Campomar, M. B., & Campomar, M. C. (2015). Using Simulator Markstrat in Marketing Planning Courses in Brazil. In The Sustainable Global Marketplace (pp. 211-211). Springer, Cham.
  • Lant, T. K., & Montgomery, D. B. (1992). Simulation games as a research method for studying strategic decision making: the case of Markstrat (No. 1242). Graduate School of Business, Stanford University.
  • Larreche, J. C. (1987). On simulations in business education and research. Journal of business research, 15(6), 559-571.
  • Larreche, J. C., & Gatignon, H. (1977). Markstrat: A Marketing Strategy Game, Palo Alto: Course Technology.
  • Sharif, Amir M. & Ranchhod, Ashok. 2009. "Using the markstrat business simulation to develop strategic management behaviours".European and Mediterranean Conference on Information Systems. https://bura.brunel.ac.uk/handle/2438/4233
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