When I was starting the game, my target market is the group of university students. For the product design part, I used the eco-friendly materials because they have high demand for this materials, the shape of the bag is rounded top with thin spaghetti straps, and no special features on it. The unite cost is $10, and the marketing price is $35. I choose the university store to sell the products and no advertisements. At the fist turn, I got $2957.99 for the net profit.
As the game progressed, I tried to choose different groups of customer to sell my products, Then I got the different results. At the second turn, I chose the the school children for my main customers, according to their demand requirements, I changed the basic straps, the green color and syntheic materials for the bag based on the first turn bag. I chose to sell the products directly through the company website to the customers. And I decreased the price from $35 to $28. I got only $63 net profit in this turn. At the third turn, I changed the outdoor enthusiasts for my customers, in this turn, I pressed the wrong botton, I added the University logo on the bag and increased the price from $28 to $37 but chose the wrong customers, so I lost $599 in this turn. At the last two turns, I kept losing money. I still chose outdoor enthusiasts for my customer group, but I added many new things on my bag, I used the large rectangular shape, wide padded straps, advanced materials with GPS and waterproofing special features. The price incresed a little high, it became $95 because the GPS cost much money. In this turn, I also used Outdoor Adventure Magazine to advertise my products, but still lost $1233.99 for my net profit. The worst turn is the last turn, I changed the urban commuters to my customers. And I added some new things on my products also, such as added a laptop sleeve, chose the blue color and used the luxury meterials. In this turn, I dealed with discount retail chain, so I decreased the price from $95 to $40. Although I changed the cheap price, I lost $4296 in this turn. I tried to choose different groups of customer because I want to find the target group of customers, but I had failed.
The first lesson I learned from this game is to establish my own customer group which I mean keep good symbiosis with one group of customer and do not keep changing; then improve the products’ quality or price based on the last turn’s data; finally to compare with the competitors’ products to change my own products. I have no ideas about my grade for this assignment because I did the bad marketing on this game, I lost much money at the end. Although I learned many things in this game, I still lost much money on it.