Alycon Motor Corporation - Stratsim Marketing

Alycon Motor Corporation

 Marketing Industry 4, Firm A

Submitted By: Jatinder Bajwa

Instructor: Drew Wolsey

MARK4475 – Marketing Management Simulation

StratSim Marketing Plan Assignment

Due Date: March 17, 2017

Table of Contents

Introduction        3

Organizational Objectives        3

Target Markets        3

Summary of Financial Results        4

Market Value        4

Firm Preference        5

Sales Revenue        6

Net Income        8

Dealer Rating        9

Market Share        10

SWOT Analysis        11

Strengths        11

Weakenesses        12

Opportunities        12

Threats        12

Competitive Analysis        13

Planned Strategy        13

Improvising target market        14

Market penetration        16

Reference        17

Introduction

The main purpose of the StratSim Marketing simulation is to implement key business operational and marketing skills in order to become a leader in the automobile industry by maximizing customer satisfaction and shareholder value. Within the simulated competitive environment I was assigned to firm “A” –Alycon Motor Corporation in Industry four- with three vehicles in family (Alfa), truck (Ace) and an economy class car (Alec). Alycon bases its business strategy on the mission statement: “Sustainable manufacturing of quality cars and trucks at reasonable prices for worldwide customer satisfaction”. Correspondingly, Alycon’s vision statement is “people working together as a lean, global enterprise for automotive leadership.”

Organizational Objectives

The firms within the StratSim Marketing simulation are uniquely positioned based upon several key performance measures At the beginning of the simulation, Alycon had a market share of just over 20% and management team realized that it would need to focus on company’s core competencies in order to bring maximum value to the company in the coming periods. The business model adopted at Alycon was to become a customer centric firm – developing specific products for specific consumers in order to satisfy the customers’ demand(s) and maximize shareholder value. Alycon, while focusing on the customers, also focused on continual internal operational improvement as one of the main objectives.

Target Markets

Throughout the course of the game, the management tried to maintain a fairly consistent overall market strategy. In Year Zero and Year One Alycon produced Alfa, Ace, and Alec, which competed in the Family (F), Truck (T), and Economy (E) markets respectively. As Alycon category also consisted of sub-markets, the management approach was to focus primarily on segments accounting for the larger number of sales. In the beginning periods Alycon was focusing on families and singles. However, over the time the company decided on catering its vehicles to value seekers aswell and decided to do B2B bidding contracts. Alycon also introduced four new vehicles designed specifically to meet the needs of potential new customer segments within the Minivan (M), Alternate Energy (A), sports (S) and Utility (U) markets that were titled Apollos, Aston Martin, Aether, and AudiX7 respectively.

Summary of Financial Results

Market Value

[pic 1]

Chart 1: market Value Share

Chart 1 illustrates the overall market value share progression over the five periods. Alycons current fifth year value market share is 27.8%.  In the beginning 1st period because of some failed pricing strategies the company’s market values went from 20% to 15.9%. There were a number of reasons why Alycon went through an initial phase of market value decline.

Alycon started by increasing the interior and safety capabilities up to 4 on the scale from 0-11, and started investing every year for three periods in technological up shift of facilities. The management also increased the quality rating of the economy and the family car in the beginning periods to 4 on the scale from 0 - 11 for targeting customer segments. Alycon’s strategy involved keeping different class of vehicles in a mid-level price range. Secondly, Alycon focused to provide business and entrepreneurial customers with the options of buying a luxury style motor vehicle models that had a distinctive price range.

Firm Preference

[pic 2]

Chart 2: Firm Preference

Alycon’s market firm preference has increased from 18 percent to 24.6 percent in the complete five time periods. Chart 2 Illustrates the pattern in which Alycon firm preference (FP) has been exhibiting. Alycon’s aggressive product inventory control measures have been great for company’s portfolio. However, with the past trifling changes in the organization Alycon is slightly stepping downwards in terms of FP.

Constant vehicle upgrades complicated manufacturing decisions for the firm. After release of an upgraded vehicle, all previous inventories were written off; therefore, we attempted to mimic just-in-time (JIT) manufacturing practices to reduce excess inventory. In theory, this would also reduce cost of goods sold by minimizing inventory carrying costs. Due to constant increase in sales volume, the management was required to increase production capacity every round. In fact, during the last couple of rounds, Alycon was a little short on capacity, which caused us to incur overage charges in production.