The Business Strategy Game is an online exercise where class members are divided into teams and assigned the task of running an athletic footwear company in head-to-head competition against companies managed by other class members. Company operations parallel those of actual athletic footwear companies. Just as in the real-world, companies compete in a global market arena, selling branded and private-label athletic footwear in four geographic regions — Europe-Africa, North America, Asia-Pacific, and Latin America.

Company co-managers must make decisions relating to plant operations, distribution and warehouse operations, work force compensation, online sales at the company’s web site, sales and marketing, and finance. The challenge is to craft and execute a competitive strategy that results in a respected brand image, keeps your company in contention for global market leadership, and produces good financial performance as measured by earnings per share, return on investment, stock price appreciation, and credit rating.

All aspects of The Business Strategy Game parallel the functioning of the real-world athletic footwear market, thus allowing you and your co-managers to (1) think rationally and logically in deciding what to do and (2) get valuable practice in making a variety of different business decisions under circumstances that mirror real-world competitive conditions.

You must register in order to make decisions for your company, review the results and reports, take the accompanying online quizzes, and do the online peer evaluations; registration is also essential for your log-ins, quiz scores, strategic plan grade, and peer evaluations to be recorded and reported to your instructor for evaluation and grading.

What will I be purchasing when I register?

When you register you will be purchasing full privileges to use the The Business Strategy Game website (www.bsg-online.com) and its software to run the athletic footwear company your instructor has assigned to you and your co-managers. Registration gains you anywhere, anytime access to all participant-related menus on The Business Strategy Game from any PC that is connected to the Internet with a Web browser (such as Internet Explorer or Firefox or Safari) and Flash 10.3 (or later) — if your PC lacks the needed Flash version, you will be automatically directed to the Flash site where the latest version can be downloaded and installed free of charge in a few minutes. Registration ensures that your work will be reported to your instructor or game administrator for evaluation and grading. Your registration is valid until the course you are enrolled in is over. There’s an online Player’s Guide (which you can print for handy reference). Built-in Help and Video Tutorials screens walk you through the decisions. A series of reports convey complete results for each decision period; these come with detailed descriptions of the numbers and graphics contained in the reports and how to use them.

Yes. Only registered participants can log-in to make decisions, review results, take the online quizzes, do peer evaluations, receive instructor e-mails generated within the The Business Strategy Game software, and have their work evaluated and graded by the course instructor or game administrator. There are also occasions when all company co-managers will want to be online simultaneously at their own PCs.

This online edition of The Business Strategy Game automatically records and reports your quiz scores, your peer evaluations of co-managers, and your log-ins to your instructor. In addition, The Business Strategy Game generates a series of reports to your instructor/game administrator after each decision period; these mainly concern the performance of all companies in your industry. Your instructor/game administrator can access most all aspects of your company’s operations and decisions at any time; likewise, the frequency and duration of your log-ins are also available to your instructor at all times.

The Business Strategy Game is a hands-on learning exercise that draws together the information and lessons of prior courses, consolidates your knowledge about the different aspects of running a company, builds your confidence in analyzing the revenue-cost-profit economics of a business, helps you understand how the functional pieces of a business fit together, provides valuable practice in crafting profitable growth strategies, sharpens your business judgment, and provides a capstone for your business school education. You will gain some useful experience and practice in assessing business risk, analyzing industry and competitive conditions, making decisions from a companywide perspective, thinking strategically about a company's market position and the kinds of actions it will take to improve it, developing strategies and revising them in light of changing conditions, and applying what you have learned in business school.

The bottom line is that The Business Strategy Game adds value by strengthening your preparation for a career in business and management. Further, we predict that The Business Strategy Game will make your competitive juices flow and that you will have a lot of fun.

All personal information you provide is used only to establish you as an officially registered participant in the BSG exercise, administer the BSG exercise, and operate the www.bsg-online.com Web site. Your personal information will not be shared with any other party beyond your instructor(s) and/or game administrator(s). None of your personal information gathered here will be used for other purposes by McGraw-Hill (the marketer of The Business Strategy Game) or by the personnel who created the software and operate the servers. However, if you are using a newly-purchased McGraw-Hill textbook in this course or other courses you are taking, the information you provide during the registration process may also be collected and retained in McGraw-Hill’s data base for the purpose of providing users of new McGraw-Hill books expedited access to other text-related and course-related features delivered at its website.

Use of Cookies: Cookies are identifiers that BSG transfers to your computer on a per-session basis. Cookies allow BSG to recognize registered participants and instructors/game administrators. The cookies BSG transfers to the PCs that you use during BSG sessions are not stored on the computer hard drive and never track your usage beyond the BSG site.

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