Vol 2: May 2005
Online Business Strategy Game Integrates Business
and Marketing Concepts
By Brian A. Vander Schee
Last spring was my first semester teaching the senior business management capstone course at the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford. Since I usually teach Principles of Marketing and Marketing Electives, I decided to change very little from the previous year, including the Business Strategy Game, 7th edition marketed by McGraw-Hill Irwin. At the end of the semester, student comments regarding the game were indifferent to extremely negative. However, I was new to the game and since I thought it had the potential to be a useful learning tool, this spring in capstone I decided to give the BSG online, 8th edition a try.
The 8th edition operates completely online, which eliminates all of the technological problems that plagued my students last year. Changes in the scoring system devalued the clearly dominant strategy the previous year, thus making many different strategies potentially effective. The online help screens and other simplifications streamlined the online player’s manual to 30 pages.
The comprehensiveness of the game stems from the broad scope of decisions that students make over a ten-week period, which represents ten years in the game industry. The anytime-anywhere access is a huge plus for students and the technological support for students and instructors is outstanding. My students find that competing against other universities provides an added incentive for them to perform well. Students access the game website (www.bsg-online.com) to see who made the weekly Global Top 20 rankings. The rankings are used to determine qualifiers for the national competition. Although I am pleased that twelve teams from Pitt-Bradford qualified and that one team made the National Grand Champion list, I am more impressed with how much energy the students put into the game and the insights they gained from the experience.
Even though the game was required as part of the business management capstone course, I believe it can be used effectively in a marketing management or strategy course. The game is integrative in that it incorporates concepts from management, finance, strategy, as well as marketing. This approach overcomes the one-dimensional nature of some simulations that focus solely on the advertising budget or product design and are labeled as marketing games. Although students should take a course in accounting as well as finance in advance to fully appreciate the financial analysis, courses in marketing are the best preparation for this game simulation in my opinion.
I highly recommend this game for instructors who want to add an integrative simulation to their management or strategy course. Instructions for professors who are interested in reviewing the game are found on the game website (www.bsg-online.com). I am also happy to share further comments and insights with interested MMA members.
Dr. Brian A. Vander Schee
Assistant
Professor of Business Management
University of Pittsburgh- Bradford
Bradford, PA 16701
Marketing Insights is a publication of the Marketing Management Association