Alycon Motor Corporation – Stratsim Marketing
Essay Preview: Alycon Motor Corporation – Stratsim Marketing
Report this essay
Alycon Motor Corporation Marketing Industry 4, Firm ASubmitted By: Jatinder BajwaInstructor: Drew WolseyMARK4475 – Marketing Management Simulation StratSim Marketing Plan Assignment Due Date: March 17, 2017Table of ContentsIntroduction 3Organizational Objectives 3Target Markets 3Summary of Financial Results 4Market Value 4Firm Preference 5Sales Revenue 6Net Income 8Dealer Rating 9Market Share 10SWOT Analysis 11Strengths 11Weakenesses 12Opportunities 12Threats 12Competitive Analysis 13Planned Strategy 13Improvising target market 14Market penetration 16Reference 17IntroductionThe 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 ObjectivesThe 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 MarketsThroughout 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 ResultsMarket Value[pic 1]Chart 1: market Value ShareChart 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 PreferenceAlycon’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.