For this last assignment, you will complete the single$-$player Data Analytics Simulation: Strategic Decision Making found in the Harvard Business course pack. It is an online simulation that is designed to help you understand the power of analytics in decision$-$making.

Context: Acting as the brand manager for a laundry detergent, you are tasked with turning around the brand's performance by using real data and market info to understand current issues and determine the best strategy for improving performance.$$You will be asked to predict market demand, set the channel price, make formulation decisions, determine promotional spending strategy, and communicate your strategy effectively to the managers. The simulation makes use of actual consumer data informed by a multinational consumer goods company.

The simulation will take around $1-2$ hours depending on how many times you run the simulation $($you can run it as many times as you wish$).$ Remember that$$successful financial performance is the result of several possible, and combinations, of factors$-$rarely does a single variable explain an outcome. Therefore, it is an iterative process to arrive in the best combinations as you will experience in this simulation. Now let's see if you can turn the brand around in four years against your key competitors. Note there are five performance measures$/$indicators$.$ For the sake of simplicity, your final performance will be evaluated from the perspective of "cumulative profit" among all performance indicators.

Steps to Complete the Assignment

$1.$ Log into your simulation game from the Harvard Business Publishing course pack.

$2.$ Learn about the simulation. Here are some background files which you can also download after signing in to your account.

Case Description

Actions

How$-$To$-$Play Guide

Actions

$3.$ Explore the site, check out the "Dashboard" to see the current state of the brand and its competitors in terms of market share, revenue, profitability, and market demand by region; go through "Reports" to get the market intelligence that would help you make better decisions; use "Data Explorer" and its filters to see how different consumer segments are related to different outcomes; check out "Geographic Demand" to learn more about the nature of each sales region; finally, go to "Make Decisions" to fill out all your decisions and use "Decision History" to review your historical decisions.$$Read through all the online info and familiarize yourself with all the factors that might play a role in affecting the brand's performance in the market.

$4.$ You can have unlimited attempts to improve the financial performance of your brand $($particularly cumulative profit$).$ After you are satisfied with result, take a screen shot of the "Dashboard."

$5.$ Upload the screen shot and answer the following questions in your debriefing of the simulation experience:

How much effort did you put into exploring the past data about Blue$$s performance? Was it time well spent? What did you learn from it$?$

What filters made you change your decisions about improving Blue$$s situation in the marketplace?

What was your overall strategy to turn around Blue$$s performance in the marketplace?

What specific factors $($e$.$g$.,$ product formulation, product features$/$positioning$,$ media channel spending, trade channel spending, etc.$)$ did you manipulate in your decisions? What was the outcome?

How did social sentiment influence your decisions?

What lessons can you draw about the use of these types of analytics for branding decisions?