SCENARIO
It is December 31, 2016. Joe Thomas, the VP of Marketing at the Wonder Company, is smugly patting himself on the back for how well he has done with pricing and product development of the three company products: W1, W2, and W3. Of course, Joe knows his strategy was not creative at all (i.e., he did not change any prices or R&D allocations over the past five-year period: 2012 through 2016). But he is certain that he really did not need to change anything anyway, and that his overall performance is proof of his good work.
Sally Smothers, the CEO of Wonder Co., knows better, and she fires Joe (but why did she wait so long?).
On the same day Joe is fired, you are hired to replace him. And so…here you are, on December 31, 2016, as the new V.P. of Marketing of the Wonder Company. You are ready to move the company ahead into 2017. Your boss, Sally Smothers, expects you to make intelligent and informed product development and pricing decisions (after all, you are an MBA).
Write a 6 (not including cover and reference pages), using Sally’s instructions, which follow:
Sally asks you to review Joe’s decisions from 2013 through 2016 to see what was going on in terms of product development, sales, pricing, and performance. Your final report is due on Sally’s desk by January 15, 2017 – you have only 2 weeks to run the simulation, analyze your results, and write up the report, so you had best get started on this now!
Using the default decisions (i.e., make no changes within the simulation), analyze Joe Thomas’s decisions and results, and then write the report that Sally is requesting. Access the Wonder Company simulation (https://forio.com/simulate/michael.garmon/wonder-co-simulation-v2/simulation/#p=page0) and collect the data for each year. Determine where you believe Joe went wrong, and propose a new strategy. Support your revised strategy using financial analysis and relevant business theories.