Educational value

Experiential Learning. Through the experiential learning approach, Marketplace Live enables students to develop hands-on skills in marketing, management, accounting, finance, and manufacturing.

Just-in-time Delivery. The disciplinary content is delivered at the point in time when students are faced with a new decision, thus increasing its relevance and the students' motivation to acquire this new knowledge.

Understanding the big picture. Marketplace Live integrates all functional areas of business. It enables students and managers to understand how the pieces fit together as a coherent whole. In six to twelve decision periods representing quarters of compressed time, student teams choose a business strategy, evaluate tactical options, and make a series of decisions with profitability in mind. Each decision round has a dominant activity linked to a set of decisions which take the students through the business life cycle.

Strategic thinking and competitiveness. The Marketplace exercise requires strategic thinking and team dynamics while using a combination of strategic business instruction, compelling market challenges, and a true-to-life simulation. The consequences of the students' decisions are quickly reflected in the simulated business world. Students learn to adjust their strategy to become stronger competitors.

Accountability and Forward Thinking. Students live within a simulated business world of their own making. Today's decisions were shaped by yesterday's decisions, and tomorrow's decisions will be shaped by today's.

Extended Case. The exercise may also be viewed as a series of related decisions or cases that extend over time and organizational function.

Interconnectedness of the Disciplines. The marketing decisions affect and are affected by the manufacturing decisions which in turn are related to the finance decisions; the accounting information facilitates or constrains all decision-making; and team management issues affect everything.

Disciplinary Detail. The issues and decisions the students deal with are at the tactical level of an organization. This tactical detail provides disciplinary depth as well as cross-functional dimension to the learning experience.

Customer Driven. Financial success can only be reached by fulfilling the needs of the customer. Even though customer satisfaction does not guarantee financial success, financial success is not possible without customer satisfaction.

Financial Responsibility. The aspirations of the student teams are always constrained by the availability of cash and the firm's profitability. By constantly dealing with these constraints, students discover how their decisions affect the company's cash flow and profitability. This also motivates them to search for ways to expand cash and profit. As a result, they develop a keen understanding of financial management.

Meaningful Context. Business principles, terms, practices, and ways of thinking are employed within the natural context of starting up and managing a business. Abstract ideas become grounded in real-to-life decision-making.

Teamwork, Interpersonal Skills, Leadership. The complexity of the Marketplace simulation requires a division of the tasks and coordination among the team members. The many tradeoffs force debate where students must learn to communicate effectively and fight for their ideas.

Critical Thinking. Students discover, and are forced to consider, the many tradeoffs inherent in every business decision. They also find that "correct" answers do not exist. What is a "good" decision depends upon the circumstances at the time.

Repetitive Exercise. Each quarter's activities not only result in new decisions and new material being introduced, but also build upon the prior content. The repetition ensures that difficult principles, concepts, and practices are assimilated into the natural thinking of the students.