Page 202 - Marketing the Basics 2nd

194 Marketing: the Basics
period with hyper-adaptive competitors? With a simulator you can find out.
The main reason a marketer would want to use a simulator is for planning purposes. Asking a manager to predict the future is impossible. However ask a manager what they should do if their competitor just introduced a new product that seems to catch the imagination of the market, you’d get a much better answer. That is where the simulator comes in. By creating virtual worlds, managers can create contingency plans just in case the proverbial doo doo hits the fan. By having the plans in place, managers will not be caught off guard and forced to react to uncertainty. By anticipating the problem, steps can be taken to mitigate the uncertainty. Simulators are starting to get the attention of military planners. Electronic Arts, makers of the popular software game called The Sims, has a contract with the US military to create virtual worlds. The idea is to see how the chain of command is affected if some calamity struck. Each officer is given a personality, rank and set of orders. By tweaking the scenario rules, planners can assess the effectiveness of their policies under conditions of a nuclear or biological attack. Of course, the key is creating the right model. If the code that models the dynamics between people, products and the market does not reflect reality, the contingency plans are practically useless.
One final note about simulators. A phenomenon that has been around for many years but has recently caught the attention of marketers are massive multiplayer online games (MMOG). These are programs which a person can download to their computer and pay a monthly fee to participate in a virtual world with tens of thousands of other players. What makes these games so interesting is that while some participants join to engage in escapism (often in the form of hacking monsters to pieces with a battle-axe), some subscribers take up a craft and sell their virtual wares. Every daring adventurer needs weapons, clothing, food and a place to sleep and to hear the latest rumours about a kidnapped king’s ransom. So some players have decided to cater to those needs by creating virtual goods that do just that. And because the service is restricted to subscribers, it is easy to attribute a cause to observed changes. For example, hackers of one MMOG managed to exploit a flaw which essentially enabled them to mint their own money. Predictably the