Week 7

Welcome back to all the readers. I am posting much earlier than usual this week because The next few days I will be working to finish my situation analysis for the simulation. For the same reason, this will be a shorter post than usual.

I would like to say that I enjoyed the quick reference to Vince Lombardi reference. I find it ironic that I had actually included a picture of Coach Lombardi in my post last week. Maybe a I have a little more of the talent Drucker had to accurately predict future events.

For this post I would like to focus on the metrics that I feel would be best for evaluating performance in the simulation and a short explanation as to why I think each of these would be best. These are going to be presented in no particular order. I do not think any one of these is any more important than another.

 

Units sold we be a good figure to look at. This will give us a good idea of how we are doing compared to our competition. If we are doing great in this area but our profits are lagging we may need to increase our prices but have high units sold will tell us that our product is selling.

Market share would be a good metric to keep track of. This will show us similar information as units sold. We will be able to see who is in control of the market or at least who is attracting the majority of customers.

I would like us to look at brand awareness. By looking at brand awareness we will be able to tell if customers know our brand. If we have low brand awareness we need to increase our advertising and/or our promotions and educate the customers who we are and why they should buy our product or products.

Customer satisfaction will be important to note as well. This metric will tell us if customers are happy with their purchase. If it is low we may have an issue with buyer dissonance. We need to make sure this does not take place. Satisfied customers are more likely to become repeat customers and customer loyalty will ultimately determine our success in the long run.

Along the same lines as customer satisfaction, brand effectiveness perception will give us valuable information. This may be an objective statistic but ultimately the customer’s perceptions dictate our reality. If folks suffering from symptoms feel our product will best treat their symptoms then they will buy it. If they don’t think it will help they will choose a competitor. We want our product to be effective and to be perceived as effective.

 

Also, I think stock price would not be a very good metric. While this number is important to many people and should not be discarded entirely it can lead us down the wrong path. We are not solely in business to increase our profits. There are other ways we can tell if we are making money without focusing on this figure.