Manual de juego estrategico para MBA

2. Copyright © 2013 by Dave Marzon
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3. How To Win
The Business Strategy
Game Online
Dave MarzoN

4. Table of Contents
About Me Page 3
Intro Page 4
The Mindset Page 5
Forecasting Page 6
Sustainable Competitive Advantages Page 8
The four strategies Page 9
Order of operations Page 12
Common Strategy elements Page 13
Ok you’re behind, so now what? Page 20
Conclusion Page 21

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How To Win The Business Strategy Game Online www.winbsgonline.com
by
Dave
Marzon
About Me
Iwould first off like to congratulate all of you on purchasing a copy of How To Win The Business
Strategy Game Online. It is the first step in destroying the competition and receiving an A.
I was in a situation similar to all of you a few years ago. I was almost done with college and I
was getting ready to enter the workforce. Unknown to me, our school’s dean decided our business
class was going to test out The Business Strategy Game Online. The game was weighted at 40% of
our grade and our teacher set us loose to compete against each other. At first, our team struggled
being in last place for the first two years. But being a naturally competitive person (and wanting to
graduate on time), I buckled down and started studying the game. I realized a lot of what the teacher
was telling us was wrong and began to learn the game inside and out. At year 20, our team was in
first place with 110 points (out of 100), ranking 5th
worldwide and the only team with a score above
50. To put it simply, we destroyed the competition.
I was asked to compete in the Business Strategy Game Invitational that following summer with
hundreds of other winning teams and ended up faring extremely well again. Through the strategies
that I myself have used to win over a dozen times, that I have used when coaching over 40 teams to
success, and the strategies I’ve seen be successful at the highest levels of play, I present to you the
strategies required to win the Business Strategy Game online.

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How To Win The Business Strategy Game Online www.winbsgonline.com
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Dave
Marzon
Intro
Although these strategies will guarantee you success in the Business Strategy Game, it is not going
to be easy. You will still need to spend the time to learn the game and understand how the game
works. If you haven’t already read it, the introduction and game how to files are located on my
YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/winbsgonline. I suggest you go over them a few
times and really understand the factors at play. I spent a lot of time boiling down the game’s strategy
guide and help files to only the most important and relevant information.
Before we get started, you need to understand that everything I say is dependent on what other
kids in the class are doing. If you bought this guide as a losing team and are looking to improve your
score, you’ll need to figure out which strategy hasn’t been used and start executing it. Change doesn’t
happen in one decision round in the BSG. If you are in last place in year 17, it can take three years
to catch up to the investor expectations.

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Marzon
The Mindset
You need to understand a few mental strategies when playing the Business Strategy Game
Online.
First, it is just a game, like chess, and not a real life business, which means a series of inputs will give
you a predetermined series of outputs.
The game literally works like this: “If our company does X and if, on average, our rivals do
Y, and then we can reasonably expect to sell about Z pairs of shoes and achieve a market share
of S%, ROE of R,% and EPS of $EE.EE.” It does not matter where you are on the market map,
what matters is how you fare in relation to the AVERAGE of your opponents.
This guide will show you the inputs and outputs that will allow you to dominate.
Unlike in the real world, you need to forget your views on business ethics, your personal sustainability
beliefs and views of what a corporation should be. In chess, there is no such thing as a cheap or unfair
move. As long as you don’t break the rules of the game, it is all fair play. Only the numbers (inputs
and outputs) matter. Treat the game like you are playing chess with a buddy. You can’t feel bad for
having no corporate social responsibility initiatives. It is a game… not real life. Also, don’t feel bad for
winning. You wouldn’t feel bad beating your friend at a game of go-fish, so why should you feel bad
about this?
Second, leave your emotions at the door and try to keep a clear head. I constantly see people making
bad instinctive decisions that end up hurting them for multiple rounds. The easiest way to combat this
is by inputting your decisions early on in the decision round and then allowing your team a few days
to think through the decisions they have made. You don’t want to make a mistake like overpaying for
a celebrity (probably the most common one) based on emotion and not the facts.
Third, take the emphasis away from how well you do and instead focus on learning the game,
forecasting accurately and making good decisions. If you do this, the results will follow. Have your
team read through this guide & introduction videos multiple times. I’ve intentionally kept them as short
as possible. When you are with your team, discuss market trends and strategies, not just the numbers
you put in. Keep this mentality throughout the game.
Fifth, don’t try to squeeze those extra few cents out of your numbers by changing your forecasts.
Teams will often finish inputting their numbers and then start messing around with their forecasts to
increase their numbers. Set your forecasts and then squeeze every additional penny out of the other
screens.

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How To Win The Business Strategy Game Online www.winbsgonline.com
by
Dave
Marzon
Forecasting
The most common thing my clients first say when I help them play the BSG is “We were supposed
to make an EPS of X… we just don’t know what happened.” The error they made is making poor
forecasts of the industry. The most important decision entry screen on the Business Strategy Game is
the sales forecasting screen. Teachers often say how well you do depends on how many people are
positioned close to you on the market map, but this is flat out wrong. Once again, what matters
is how you are positioned compared to the INDSUSTRY AVERAGE, not what your individual
opponents around you do. A third time, the entire game is based off of how you relate to the average
of your opponents, not where you are on the market map. For example, if ½ of your class has a SQ
rating of 7 and the other ½ of your class has a SQ rating of 3, the industry average will be an SQ rating
of 5. It doesn’t matter if no one in the class has an SQ rating of 4, 5 or 6. The game behaves as if every
one of your opponents has an SQ rating of 5 and compares how you do to your theoretical opponent
with a 5 star SQ rating. This applies to almost everything in the game: celebrity appeal, marketing,
retailer support, delivery time, etc., etc. It doesn’t necessarily matter how much you are spending on X,
what matters is how much you are spending in relation to your opponents. For example, if everybody
spends 1M dollars on marketing in North America, the game treats that as if nobody has spent any
money on marketing.
A more obscure example is when a few teams and you employ a low SQ rating strategy, but the
majority of the class moves away from you with a high SQ rating strategy. The class’s high SQ ratings
will require high prices. The high prices will raise the class averages for shoe prices and allow you
to sell your shoes significantly higher because you’ve moved the class average above the norm. The
prices of your immediate competition don’t matter; what matters is the high SQ strategies are allowing
you to sell for a much higher price.
If you can forecast accurately, the game essentially works like this: “If our company does X and
if, on average, our rivals do Y, and then we can reasonably expect to sell about Z pairs of shoes and
achieve a market share of S% and performance benchmarks of P.” That quote was taken directly out
of the business strategy game guide. Only two things will cause your numbers to be off:
1. You’ve incorrectly predicted what the industry averages will be
2. There is too much or too little competition and the industry expands or shrinks above
the median. (For example, the game assumes that branded growth rates in North America will be
in between 5-7% in year 11. It averages them and makes the sales forecast based on an increased
demand of 6%. If competition is particularly stiff, it will change the growth rates to 7% or even slightly
higher.) Slightly differing growth rates have a minimal impact on your predictions.
The best way you can predict what the competition is doing is by filling out the excel forecasting

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How To Win The Business Strategy Game Online www.winbsgonline.com
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Marzon
sheet. The more accurate your predictions, the more bonus points you will get and the more you will
be able to rely on your entries on different screens.
The average shoe price and number of models are the most important entries on the sales forecast
screen and it is extremely important you are as accurate as possible.
I almost always forecast that competition is going to get stiffer year to year. Assume prices will drop,
the number of models will increase with retailer support, marketing, etc. Unless your predictions tell
you otherwise, it is reasonably safe to assume SQ rating, rebates, and delivery times will remain fairly
constant.
Different forecasting scenarios
After you’re done inputting your numbers into the BSG-Online, it is wise to run best and
worst-case scenarios for the average shoe price and other potential major shifts. Make sure your
credit rating, EPS and ROE don’t fall too much if prices end up being a dollar or so less than what you
expected. Depending on where the market is, it can be highly or barely sensitive to price changes and
it is important to make sure you are protecting yourself from worst-case scenarios.
For example, let’s say you predict your shoe price for NA is going to $56.00 dollars and then
optimize forecasts to an EPS of $12.00 a share. Try switching your forecasts to a conservative version
and a liberal version. If your EPS drops to $11.00 in the conservative scenario and rises to $12.50
in the liberal scenario, that is a highly stagnant forecast. However, if your EPS drops to $6.00 on
the conservative scenario and $11.50 on the liberal scenario, that is a highly volatile forecast. In
this situation, I would forecast at the more conservative amount and then re-optimize my numbers
because the conservative forecast will still produce a high EPS somewhere around $10.00 even at the
now optimized conservative forecast.
Situations when you should not trust your forecasts
1. When the game is first starting out. Follow the year 11 forecasts and use your gut
instincts. What do you think the completion is going to do? It is much better to be on the conservative
side.
2. When there has been massive expansion with multiple companies. Often in year 12,
13 and 14, multiple companies will expand at near maximum allowed production. It is best to be
extremely conservative in these situations, especially if you are selling a lot of excess capacity under
private label, because groups might try to significantly lower their price to capture larger market share
or fully utilize their plants.
3. When you are making a big price drop/rise, and thus it is important to compensate for
your move in the forecasts.
4. When a team makes an unusual move that you feel will cause the class to overreact.
The most common example of this is when one team buys five celebrities in one round and overpays
for each one. Some teams will view the need to compensate by lowering their price artificially low.

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How To Win The Business Strategy Game Online www.winbsgonline.com
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Dave
Marzon
Sustainable
Competitive
Advantages
In the game, there are a few sustainable competitive advantages we are going to strive for. A
common mistake players make is focusing on being too reactive to what their opponents aren’t doing
and then trying to find a successful niche. This isn’t a good strategy because all it takes is a competitor
to look at market intelligence reports and copy exactly what you are doing. Instead, we are going to
focus on strategies that are either impossible to copy or require multiple decision rounds to achieve
and can be defended against. Here are the sustainable advantages; how to achieve each advantage
will be discussed more thoroughly later.
1. Economies of scale
By continually expanding your plant capacity, you will be able to distribute your costs on
things like celebrities, plant upgrades, marketing, retailer support, interest expenses, and just about
everything else across more shoes. Economies of scale will allow you to produce the cheapest shoes
possible while still paying significantly above average prices on marketing, celebrities, etc. This
becomes especially true in the private label sector.
2. Best distribution network
One of the easiest forgotten (and hardest to replicate) advantages is having the most retailers
willing to carry your shoes. It is impossible to copy this strategy once you have a high market share
because retailer support is largely a function or market share and you won’t be allowing teams to
capture much additional market share.
3. Good financial standing
The financial standing of your company will allow you to weather price battles and walk out
ahead. Having a good credit rating will allow you to purchase loans at an increasingly affordable
rate. Out of all the strategies, this is the easiest to copy and least impactful.
4. Best Practices & TQM / Six Sigma
Especially important if going for a high SQ strategy, expenditures on Best Practices and TQM/Six
Sigma will allow you to produce shoes at a price your competitors can’t. If you focus on spending
money on these investments early in the game, it will be impossible for your competitors to catch
up.
5. Celebrity Endorsement
Near monopolization of celebrities with long term contracts will give you a sustainable
competitive advantage. Remember, it only matters what you do in relation to industry average. If
you own ½ of the celebrities and your celebrity appeal is 400, the average celebrity appeal will be
85 over four times that of the class average. It doesn’t matter if it is two teams who each have 400
and are in the same market share.

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Marzon
The four strategies
There are four key strategies to winning the Business Strategy Game Online. Each of the four
strategies are based on my experience: playing extensive games myself, coaching others and watching
what other winning teams have done. I probably sound like I’m being repetitive but remember SQ
rating and number of models relate to the average. For example, having an SQ rating of 7 is too much
if the industry average is 3. It isn’t enough if the industry average is 6.
The Differences Between Each Strategy
Strategy 1: Low SQ Rating & Low Models
Pros & Cons
• Pros
Good beginning strategy to move to strategy 2
• Cons
ǹ
ǹ Easily copied
ǹ
ǹ Hurts image rating unless you have a ton of market share (which you should)
ǹ
ǹ You have to take added measures to increase retailer support
Upgrades to take
• Asia Pacific & Latin America
ǹ
ǹ Option C
ǹ
ǹ Option A
• North America
ǹ
ǹ Option C
ǹ
ǹ Option D

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Strategy 2: Low SQ Rating & High Models
Pros & Cons
• Pros
ǹ
ǹ Extremely difficult to copy because of sustainable competitive advantages
ǹ
ǹ Takes advantages of upgrades that also allow you to dominate the private
label market
ǹ
ǹ It takes multiple turns to emulate strategy and multiple defensive actions
can be taken
ǹ
ǹ High model numbers allow you to capture market share your competitors
can’t and price your products much higher
• Cons
ǹ
ǹ You have to highly leverage yourself to accomplish it, making you
sensitive to price wars
ǹ
ǹ Hurts image rating unless you have a ton of market share (which you should)
ǹ
ǹ You have to take added measures to increase retailer support
Upgrades to take
• Asia Pacific & Latin America
ǹ
ǹ Option C
ǹ
ǹ Option B
• North America
ǹ
ǹ Option B
ǹ
ǹ Option D
Strategy 3: High SQ Rating & Low Models
Pros & Cons
• Pros
ǹ
ǹ Good beginning strategy to move to strategy 4
ǹ
ǹ Good for image rating
ǹ
ǹ Helps attract retailers
ǹ
ǹ Allows you to take full advantage of TQM/Six Sigma & Best Practices
• Cons
ǹ
ǹ Easily copied
ǹ
ǹ You might lose some competitiveness in the private label sector
Upgrades to take
• Asia Pacific & Latin America
ǹ
ǹ Option A
ǹ
ǹ Option D
• North America
ǹ
ǹ Option A
ǹ
ǹ Option D
Strategy 4: High SQ Rating & High Models
Pros & Cons
• Pros
ǹ
ǹ Extremely difficult to copy
ǹ
ǹ It takes multiple turns to emulate strategy and multiple defensive actions can be
taken
ǹ
ǹ Good for image rating
ǹ
ǹ The only strategy that really stands to take market share away from strategy 2

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Marzon
ǹ
ǹ Helps attract retailers
ǹ
ǹ Allows you to take full advantage of TQM/Six Sigma & Best Practices
ǹ
ǹ High model numbers allow you to capture market share your competitors can’t
and price your products much higher
• Cons
ǹ
ǹ You will have to leverage yourself to get there
ǹ
ǹ You might lose some competitiveness in the private label sector
Upgrades to take
• Asia Pacific & Latin America
ǹ
ǹ Option B
ǹ
ǹ Option A
• North America
ǹ
ǹ Option D
ǹ
ǹ Option A
What Strategy I Recommend
In my experience, the best strategy to strive for is Strategy 2: Low SQ rating, High Models. It
allows you to consistently get the highest EPS, ROE and stock price. The reasons I find it so effective are
because it starts out the most successful and puts all of your opponents on the back foot. Momentum
is one of the most important factors in the game and you can literally put all of your opponents two
or three turns behind you. Second, this strategy will allow you to continually max out adding new
capacity in Latin America and Asia Pacific and unload the extra capacity in the Private Label market.
I normally have around 19 percent wholesale market share, 22% internet market share and 100%
private label market share by year 5 employing this strategy in a 10 team class.

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Order of operations
The decision screens are highly related and teams will often hurt themselves by changing numbers
and being unaware of the effects they have on the rest of the numbers. Here is the most efficient way
of going through the decision entry screens to save you time and ensure you get the highest score:
1. Purchase additional plant capacity for sale by other teams. (Do immediately after the previous
year’s decision round ends)
2. Spend some time with your team and do an in-depth review of the week’s reports, tariffs,
interest rates, etc.
3. Input all data into the sales forecast excel spreadsheet.
4. Input data into the sales forecast decision entry screen. Don’t concentrate on how your forecast
data will change your EPS, ROE, Credit Rating & Image Rating. You are trying to predict accurate
forecasts at this point, not maximize profit.
5. Go to the private label screen and uncheck all accepted bids from previous turns. We want
to see the isolated effects of our decisions in the wholesale & internet market. The numbers will be
distorted if you’re still in the private label.
6. Go to the branded production screen, do a rough estimate of your manufacturing in each
region and minimize production and labor costs across all factories.
7. This step is where all of the work will be. You’re going to want to maximize your profit (or
market share) in the wholesale marketing screen. Your performance metrics are interrelated between
the branded production, branded distribution and branded marketing screen. You will need to go back
and forth between these three screens to make sure your numbers really are as high as they can go.
The bulk of your time will be spent here and the more time you spend, the higher your results will
likely be.
8. Go to the internet marketing screen and maximize profit (or market share) while not directly
competing with wholesale. You will need to go back and forth between branded production and
distribution on these two screens as well to make sure your numbers are as high as possible.
9. Minimize costs on the Private label screen and unload additional capacity by placing competitive
bids.
10. Go to plant capacity screen and buy necessary upgrades and purchase additional capacity.
Most expensive upgrades first.
11. Go to CSR screen and select any desired options.
12. Go to Financial Screen and buy back any stock, re-finance any loans, take out new loans, etc.
13. Purchase celebrities.
14. Talk about under what conditions, where and how much plant capacity you would purchase
next week if it ends up for sale.

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Common Strategy elements
Different Markets
All of the advice below is predicated on the theory that you will be distributing wholesale in
all four regions and the internet. I have never played or seen a successful strategy where a company
wasn’t everywhere.
Pricing
The pricing of your shoe will have the largest effect on your market share and performance
benchmarks. There are two strategies for pricing your shoes. The first strategy is market share based.
You will often find that it becomes an “unwise” financial decision to lower your shoe prices and
capture additional market share. In reality, this strategy is very helpful. I adopt a market share strategy
when competition is stiff and in the beginning stages of the game after I’ve already expanded my plant
capacity a few times. It is more important that my opponents do more poorly than for me to have
insane financial benchmarks in the first few years. Remember, only your final years scores matter, so
it is wise to take financial hits in the beginning of the game if they will improve your positions later.
Keep in mind that your lower priced shoe’s margins will increase yearly too because of TQM/Six Sigma
& Best Practices expenditures.
In a financial benchmark strategy, you focus on selling your shoes for a price that benefits your ROE,
EPS and Credit and then unload all additional shoes into the private label market. This strategy works
best at the end stages of the game or if your credit score is starting to inhibit your success.
Note: Start out the game trying to increase market share as much as possible the first few years.
It will devastate your opponents and make the rest of the game 10x easier.
Number of Shoes & Pricing
If you employ a high model strategy, your pricing can end up being very inelastic. It won’t
matter the price you sell it for, people will still buy your shoes. If you employ a high model strategy,
make sure to see what happens if you increase your price every year to make sure you aren’t losing
out on additional revenue.

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Best Practices & TQM/Six Sigma
Although Best Practices & TQM/Six Sigma aren’t often cost efficient if analyzed on a year to
year basis, the cumulative cost savings make it a highly worthwhile investment. For every strategy, I
recommend maxing out Best Practices & TQM/Six Sigma for the first few years and then tapering off as
you start to approach the last few years of the game. For example, I would invest the maximum in each
practice for the first 4/10 years if I am perusing a low SQ rating strategy and the maximum for 7/10
years if I am perusing a high SQ rating strategy. Use your own judgment by looking at the cumulative
cost savings on the right hand side of the branded production screen. It is important to note that Best
Practices & TQM/Six Sigma have reduced returns at the highest levels and are lessened when Upgrade
D is purchased (which you shouldn’t do for ¾ strategies in the important Latin America & Asia Pacific
plants).
Best Practices & TQM/Six Sigma have a much larger cost savings on high SQ rated shoes. It is much
more important to invest in each if you are perusing a high SQ rating strategy.
Best Practices & TQM/Six Sigma also have effects on the private label as well, even though you
don’t have the option to change them on the private label screen.
How to minimize production costs
After you’re done selecting Best Practices & TQM/Six Sigma, you want to minimize the rest of
the production costs by selecting the ratio of superior materials to enhanced styling. It is extremely
important to get the lowest costs possible for your desired SQ rating and the only way to do this is just
sit down and mess with the numbers. I start by slowly raising each one and recording its effect on total
cost for branded shoes on a piece of paper next to me.
Superior materials will often be more cost efficient with strategies that have high numbers of
models and low model strategies will often benefit more from enhanced styling.
If perusing a high SQ strategy, it is critical to predict the superior material prices (by clicking the
green graph icon at the top right part of the page). Material predictions rely on how many other teams
are using superior materials and can be estimated relatively easily by using the provided spreadsheet.
Wages
It is important to minimize the costs on wages and incentive pay by messing around with the
numbers the same way you did for superior materials & enhanced styling. I normally start with 0 (or
negative 2 for wages) and then slowly work my way up until I get no extra return. It is important to go
a few notches above where the return appears to stop to make sure it doesn’t start going down again.
Maximizing number of retailers
One of the most important sustainable advantages you can achieve in the game (and one of
the most highly overlooked ones by your opponents) is having a strong distribution network. It takes
multiple years to attract additional retailers but they can be lost almost instantly if you make a poor
decision. Having a strong distribution network relies on these factors:

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1. Your market share
2. The SQ ratings of your shoes
3. The delivery time of your shoes
4. The amount of support given to retailers
Whether retailers view your internet prices as being in direct competition with them. Retailers view
the price as direct competition if it is less than 40% above the wholesale price. For example, if your
shoes in Europe are priced at $50.00 wholesale, the lowest you can set the internet price is at $70.00.
It is really important to remember the majority of your wholesale market share will come from retailer
distribution and not internet sales. Internet sales will start out at 5% in year 1 and grow 1% annually
till year 20, maxing out at 15%.
The most important factor hands down is market share and all of the recommended strategies above
strive for maximum market share. I cannot stress enough how important it is to keep your internet price
40% above the wholesale price. The amount of support you offer should be a degree or two higher
than your competitors. Retailers base their decision to carry you on how much support you provide
compared to your opponents. Delivery times can attract significant amounts of additional retailers, but
is rarely cost effective to do so.
Excess Inventory
When doing your yearly distribution projections, you want to shoot to have roughly 10-30k
in extra inventory for each region every year. Especially considering your projections should be
conservative, you want to have a few extra shoes to sell.
Private Label
One of the most devastating things you can do to your opponents (especially in the beginning
stages of the game) is destroy the private label market. With your high plant capacities, upgrades and
economies of scale, you will be able to sell shoes for a good profit at the price it costs your opponents
to even make the shoes.
It is important to bid the right prices when trying to capture private label market share. The more
market share you’re trying to capture, the lower you want your price to be to ensure you don’t lose the
bid. Losing a private label market share bid can destroy your company’s ROE & EPS. Since $.01 can
be the difference between winning and losing a private label bid, you want to bid odd amounts like
$0.45 or $0.95 to make sure you don’t lose by just a few cents.
A trick I’ve done to make a serious amount of extra cash, which sometimes doubles your EPS
and ROE for a turn, is if you capture 100% market share in the private label market for a few years.
Your opponents will stop bidding because they know they can’t compete with you. In a year you think
they won’t be bidding, crank up the prices of your private label shoes to a ridiculously high amount
(remember it still needs to be $5.00 below the wholesale price for that region if you want to get your
bid accepted). For example, let’s say you are bidding 20.50 for shoes in Asia Pacific in year 14 & 15
and nobody is competing with you. In year 16, change the price to 35 (if you imagine the average
price will be 41) and watch your profits soar. To capitalize on this even further (especially if you have
already bought back your 2.5M shares), increase your dividend that year and then sell off around 900k
shares at your ridiculously high stock price the following year, knowing your stock will return to normal
levels. It is a lot of free money you can use to pay off your loans. Don’t do this the final year of the
game; the game has safeguards in place and will only let you sell a portion of your stock.
Exchange rates have a major impact on the private label market and it is important to adjust
your price accordingly and pay attention to which teams are aware of exchange rate impacts. Ex. Some
teams will move their extra inventory to the market that seems the most profitable… but they just don’t
understand it is an exchange rate issue. If shoes were selling for 22 dollars on average in Asia in Year

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12 but then exchange rates drop 8%, keep in mind it will make everybody’s production costs seem
to magically decrease and might create hyper competition in that area. The opposite is often true, as
well.
Inventory Clearance
It is rare that inventory clearance is ever effective. The only situation where it makes sense to
clear inventory is if the numbers are highly profitable. Remember, inventory clearance takes shoes
away from your wholesale market share where the majority of your money should be coming from.
Plant Capacity
No matter which strategy you are going for, it is really important to purchase extreme amounts
of plant capacity. The first year, max out your Asia Pacific Plant and start building a new plant in Latin
America. Because of the lower wages and economies of scale, the more plant capacity you have in
Asia Pacific and Latin America, the cheaper your costs of shoes will be. For the first 4-5 years, I would
continue to expand at that rate until you’ve maxed out your Asia Pacific plant and have high capacity
in Latin America or until you have 100% of the private label market share. You will need to take out
significant loans to fund your rapid expansion. As long as you continue to increase your EPS and ROE,
your credit rating shouldn’t fall below a B- during these years of rapid expansion. You want to use
120% of your capacity EVERY SINGLE YEAR by unloading all extra shoes into private label.
With most strategies, you will have close to or 100% private label market share by year six.
You never want to sell plant capacity (unless it is in North America), but it is wise to buy all
plant capacity being sold in Asia-Pacific or Latin America. Plant capacity is sold on a first come first
serve basis, so it is important to log in to the BSG-Online minutes after the decision round closes to
purchase any additional capacity.
Buying Upgrades
It is extremely important you purchase the upgrades for your strategy as early in the game as
possible for two reasons. First, you want to get a maximum return on your investment. Second, as
your plant capacity increases, the costs of each upgrade will increase as well. The game does not
charge you extra when buying plant capacity if you have already purchased an upgrade. Buy the most
expensive upgrades first because they won’t be a cost efficient decision as the game goes on. You
should purchase upgrades in your Asia-Pacific plant in years 11 and 12 and in your Latin America plant
in years 12 and 13 because you can’t purchase an upgrade the same year you build a plant. Since we
don’t recommend buying any additional capacity in North America, it isn’t as crucial to purchase the
upgrades immediately. We still recommend you buy the worker productivity upgrade for your North
America plant and an upgrade that coincides best with your strategy.
Loans
You will need to take out significant loans in the beginning years to keep pace with your stock
buyback, plant upgrades and plant expansion. This is okay. It is best to max out 10 year loans first
because they will have the smallest impact on your credit rating. During a few years (like year 1), you
will also need to take out a five year loan as well. It is important to loan enough money to make sure
you still have decent cash reserves; otherwise, you will run the risk of over drafting. Over drafting not
only costs you a lot of money because of the high interest rates but can destroy your credit rating for
a turn and make it not cost efficient to expand, thus derailing your strategy.

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How To Win The Business Strategy Game Online www.winbsgonline.com
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Dave
Marzon
If you are following the strategies, you will likely be heavily leveraged by roughly year 15 but at
maximum capacity in Asia-Pacific and near maximum capacity in Latin-America. You want to shift
your profits to accelerating the pay down of your loans to increase your profitability (by reducing your
interest expense) and increasing your credit rating. This will free up cash flow for higher dividends in
the final years and better credit ratings to pump your stock price.
Re-Financing Loans
If your credit rating ever improves or interest rates fall round to round, it is always a good idea
to re-finance as many loans as you can. Re-financing a loan is simple. You pay off the existing loan
and take a new one out at the exact same price.
Stock Buyback
You should buy back the maximum amount of stock you can every year until you have bought
back the maximum 2.5 million shares. Buying back stock will:
1. Increase your earnings per share
2. Increase your Return on Equity
3. Increase your company stock price
4. Allow you to pay higher dividends per share
Buying back stock is one of the few things you can do in the game that will easily and dramatically
increase your score. It is especially important to do this in the beginning of the game while your stock
price is relatively low. It might be too expensive to buy back stock when it increases over $200.00 a
share.
There are a few exceptions when you don’t want to buy back any stock and even selling might be
advantageous:
When you know your stock price is going to fall the next year. It can be wise to sell a small portion
of your stock at its higher price and then buy it back next year at its low price. It is important if you do
this to make sure you’re still able to buy the total 2.5 million shares allowed to get a maximum ROE,
EPS and stock price at the final round of the game. Remember, it is only your final year’s score that
counts. This tactic essentially gives you free money, but doing it too many times will make investors
weary and hurt your stock price in the long run.
If you think the competition is getting too stiff and your debt is becoming too much of a burden. In
this situation, it can be okay to sell a small amount of stock with the intention of paying off debt. Once
again, this is a last resort where you NEED to do this to keep your spot at or near the top of the pack.
You should not finance any plant expansions or upgrades by selling off stock.
Dividends
In year 10, your company paid a 1.00 dividend per share. We recommend reducing it to roughly
.05 cents a share and then increasing it $.10 cents or so a share every year until you can afford to really
pump it up in final years. The game keeps track of whether or not your company increases dividends
year after year and your stock price will increase if investors see a trend in increased dividends. In
every case I’ve seen, it appears as if the game only takes into account what the current dividend price
is and how many years it was increased when determining stock price. It doesn’t seem to notice how

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How To Win The Business Strategy Game Online www.winbsgonline.com
by
Dave
Marzon
big the dividend increases were year after year. Winning strategies will often pay dividends at roughly
75% their EPS in the final two or three years of the game.
It looks better to have no dividend than constantly decreasing ones. If you feel your company
won’t be able to afford dividends in the upcoming years, just stop paying them instead of decreasing.
Corporate Social Responsibility
Of all the factors in the game, your image rating is the least important and is much more
heavily affected by your SQ rating and market share than any CSR activities. CSR expenditures are
compounding over 4 years and it can be worthwhile to pump your image rating the final four years if
you have extra cash. For example, spending on ethics will have a higher impact on your image rating
after the fourth consecutive year compared to when you first do it. For this reason, we recommend
you don’t spend any money on CSR until year 16. During year 16, we recommend you do things in
this order:
1. Do ethics training for all employees
2. Enforce workplace diversity
3. Implement energy efficiency if you have a cash excess and low image because it depreciates
at 5% annually
4. Do recycled packaging only if you have lots of extra cash and a low image rating because you
are pursuing a low SQ rating strategy
5. Do not do green packaging.
6. Chartable contributions seem to have minimal returns.
Celebrity Bids
Bidding on celebrities is a very important part of the game and a way to obtain a competitive
edge your opponents can’t easily copy. There are a few things to keep in mind when bidding on
celebrities. First, economies of scale allow you to pay a lot less per shoe on each celebrity. Second, it
is extremely important not to overpay. As you will see in the game, many teams will make desperate
moves, spending well over $10M dollars to obtain a celebrity. Celebrities aren’t worth it if you have
to over pay for them. The best tactic is to start early and bid on every celebrity at under $5M dollars
in the beginning stages of the game and under $10M dollars at the later stages of the game. I tier my
endorsement bids based on which of my regions have the lowest celebrity appeal.
I recommend trying to bid the most competitively on long term celebrity contracts in the beginning
of the game. All teams will have low profits and will view 6M on a celebrity contract as outrageous,
but bidding will normally exceed 10M in years 14, 15 and 16 giving you a celebrity at a fraction of the
cost.
When bidding on celebrities, it is important to pick a relatively random number above the
nearest whole number to ensure you don’t have a tie. For example, if I wanted to win a celebrity for
$5M dollars, I would probably bid $5590 million to try and win him.
If you have over 400 in celebrity appeal, you start to get diminishing returns but it is still wise to
pay a few million dollars for a celebrity if you can afford it to stop your competitors from getting the
endorsement.
IT IS IMPORTANT NOT TO OVERPAY FOR CELEBRITIES BUT RATHER INVEST THE MONEY INTO
OTHER AREAS IF CELEBRITIES ARE TOO COSTLY.

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How To Win The Business Strategy Game Online www.winbsgonline.com
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Dave
Marzon
Defensive Actions
As you start to succeed at that game, you will become the target that everybody else wants to
be. If you feel that too many companies are trying to copy your exact strategy, it might start a price war
that would not be good for anybody. In order to help survive or prevent a situation like that, we have
multiple actions. One of the advantages of our strategies is they will all take multiple years to emulate.
It is important to look at the competitive intelligence reports and market snapshots to catch somebody
trying to copy your strategy earlier instead of later. Here is what to do:
1. You can sell 1-3 million shares of stock while your price is still extremely high and use this to
pay down your debt. You will likely have a really high interest expense (sometimes 50-70% of your
profit) and will be making massive principle payments. By lowering your expenses, you will be able to
compete with them on a price level that won’t make your company very profitable but will bankrupt
theirs. When you start competing on wholesale price, it is important to increase retailers’ support
(because you have a massive market share) and buyback stock at its cheaper price. These actions can
give you a significant advantage you can only get at really low prices but will stay with you when the
price war ends.
2. Especially in the beginning stages of the game, many teams make a majority of their profit from
the private label sectors. By capturing a large portion of private label market share, you will put many
of your competitors in situations where they can’t compete with you because of their poor credit
rating.
3. With most BSG games, there will be a lot of in-class discussion around what is happening. You
can use these discussions to dissuade your teammates by talking about how you would defend against
a price war. You don’t want to use a defensive tone, just discuss trends and the bad hypothetical
situation if it were to happen.
4. It is common for teachers to help students who are in last place. The teachers have an unfair
tool they can use, which allows them to see the actual, not projected, EPS, ROE, stock price, credit
rating and image rating in real time based on the numbers teams CURRENTLY have saved into their
decision entry screens. In other words, he will sit down with the team and mess around with their
numbers until they find some they know will work. In the event you think this is happening, I suggest
you do all of your decision making, but just take screen shots or record what you wrote down and
then re-input the changes and save them the night the simulation is due or after the teacher’s last office
hours for the week. This will make the teacher’s statistics highly inaccurate. You can even go as far as
playing with the numbers to make your situation worse than it really is by doing things like dropping
out of the wholesale market completely and then pressing save. Remember the decisions can be saved
and changed over and over until the round deadline.
5. Adopt a market share pricing strategy.
6. It is also helpful to make multiple small moves each turn. Instead of going from the standard year
11 numbers to an SQ rating of 3 and 500 models, do it slowly over multiple turns. At the beginning
stages of the game, you will be easier to copy and don’t want to completely give away your cards.
Also, drawing attention to things like celebrities are your reason for success. This obviously isn’t true
and will cause your classmates to overpay for celebrities the following years.

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How To Win The Business Strategy Game Online www.winbsgonline.com
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Dave
Marzon
Ok you’re behind,
so now what?
The first thing you need to remember is you’re not going to end up at the top in one or two turns
normally. It can literally take the rest of the game to regain your spot on top. Keep a clear head and
forge forward slowly. Figure out which strategy above isn’t being utilized, really do a deep dive into the
competitive intelligence reports and figure out what it is going to take to get there. A few roadblocks
I commonly see:
You’re losing and your credit ranking has tanked. It is important to spend a turn and try to get your
company in sound financial condition before you start expanding.
You’ve realized before you bought this guide you could make a lot of money if you tried to capture
a ton of internet market share and now you’ve really hurt your retail distribution network. You should
raise your internet price and start focusing on improving your distribution network immediately.
You’ve overspent on celebrities and are in a long-term contact. It is best to just cancel the contract
and increase your free cash flow.

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How To Win The Business Strategy Game Online www.winbsgonline.com
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Dave
Marzon
Conclusion
I find my customers come from two places. First, they are users who did poorly in the practice
round and decided it wasn’t going to be as easy as they thought. A word of advice for these people:
Don’t assume just reading this guide will give you an automatic 100. You still have to work. Watch all
of the YouTube videos, read through the guide a few times and make sure you know the game. If you
put in the time (which is still a lot less than if you didn’t buy the guide), you will win the game. The
second group is people who are behind and what they are trying to do to catch up isn’t working. I
recommend following the same advice as the first team and really taking the mindset section to heart.
You aren’t going to catch back up in one turn. It is tempting to “play” with the numbers until you’ve
“maximized” your performance. Just because your EPS is predicted to be $4.00 doesn’t mean it will
be $4.00. Take your time, be conservative and focus on creating sustainable competitive advantages.
If you have any questions at all, please don’t hesitate to contact me at davemarzon@winbsgonline.
com.