Simulation Incidents - Week 6

This week was tough for me with the little Internet access that I had but my group members were great. So going into period one there was the incident with social media. We had to choose between a website with interactive blog or Facebook and Twitter as well as deciding whether to allocate funds to Google Adwords. Personally, I know that I skip over the advertisements on Facebook and Twitter. Even though the apps are extremely popular, most are on them for their own social networking. It was decided that we would have a full website for our product in order to convey all of the necessary information about it. The safety of consumers is a priority and making sure they know all of the information about the product rather than just seeing a passerby ad is most important. Also, with that website was an interactive blog so that we can constantly update the consumer.

Now going into period two there was an incident with quality assurance. So we could have spent money ($100,000) to dispose of an expiring batch of product or tried to push the product into the market and tried to quickly sell. In this case, the product, if sold, would be less effective due to its nearing expiration and could have hurt the Allround brand image. Therefore, it was decided that we were dispose of the product. Even at the extra cost, in the long run it was the best decision for the company.

This second decision reminded me of something discussed in class, should Blackberry stop pouring its money into its product when it cannot compete with Apple. I just think that Blackberry needs to innovate and find their niche. It is clear with other product such as the Android, Samsung Galaxy and even Nokia have been displaying features in their smart devices that are comparable or even better than features of an iPhone. However, like someone said in class, its all about interconnectibility. Its not a secret and can be seen everywhere you go that the iPhone is dominant in the market. There was a time when a lot of people with Blackberrys had BBM and then Apple took over with imessage. I want to be able to feel like I fit in, when it comes to communicating. I can still remember when all five of my roommates in college had an iPhone and I had one of those phones with no internet. I would get twenty random text messages but with the iPhone I wouldn’t have to leave the screen I was on. 

Overall, we had some ups and downs in the first few decisions of the simulation. At first we thought that pouring some more money into the detailers would help us with connecting to more doctors. However, it caused us to lose market share meaning that in order to gain more support for the product, sending promoters out was not the way to go.  Therefore, to address the health concerns that came along with our product, we dropped the alcohol contained in it. By this time we were still over budget so it was decided to drop the overall advertising budget, get rid of trials, reduce the amount allocated to coupons, and drop the number of mass merchandisers from the sales force. At the same time, the volume discounts for <250 and <2500 were lowered, but we took a 1% increase to both 2500+ and wholesale. This allowed us to be under budget as well as raise our revenue, gross margin, and net income.