Kayla Langmaid/Winonan

Winona State University’s business students ranked third in the 2013 MarketPlace Live Tournament while competing with students around the world in a product-marketing simulation experience.

Senior Winona State student and attendee Amy Rick said, “I learned how to write an effective business plan that’s for sure.”

Students in Small Business Management 425 last fall semester were put into seven groups and given a specific industry that they would be a part of for the semester.

“My group was given the computer industry, and we named our group Windy City Electronics,” Rick said.

The competition ranked students in three different areas including Grand Market Master, Market Master and Market Leader Awards.

Assistant professor of business administration Ronald Decker was the adviser for the game and said this is the best Winona State students have done.

The strategic corporate management game grades students on benchmarks such as profitability, customer satisfaction, and market share in the targeted market segments. It also measured human resource management, preparedness for the future and wealth.

A total of 50 groups were competing in the simulation game.

“I learned how a business is run. It gave us real experience on how to start a company and run a company,” Rick said.

The computer simulation game involved how to market your product, how to price it, advertise it, compete in a competitive market, adapt to new technology, and deal with losing and gaining money.

The groups had a new task each week such as coming up with a new product or coming up with a new way to advertise that product. At the end of each week, groups would see results on how much of the market share had been gained or lost among the groups in the class.

The groups could also see each week how they compared with other schools around the world.

In the middle of the semester, groups were assigned to a 56-page business plan stating what their company had accomplished and what they want to do in the future.

The business plan included how many employees the groups had and what they were paid, what their vacation time was, their pension, their health care benefits, the product’s price, competitor’s prices, market share, market research and advertising.
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