1.

Always check for price elasticity: The Business Strategy Game uses ranges to compute
price & demand instead of a fluid curve.
- Example: If you predict the industry average of shoes prices in North America to be
50 dollars, The Business Strategy Game might compute that you will sell 3M pairs of
-

shoes in NA between the price of $49.00 and $51.00 dollars.

So how do I implement this? Just set your forecasts and then test slightly higher
price points on the wholesale distribution screen to make sure your not missing out on

additional profit.
A few caveats: The range becomes wider as the SQ & model number strategies of
teams deviate more. This normally happens the most intensely during the later stages
of the game.

2. Buying back stock is one of the only tips you can do in the game that will instantly
guarantee you a higher score because it increases almost every metric youre graded on
-

Increases your EPS dramatically, Increases your ROE dramatically, You can pay a
higher dividend for less cash, Your stock price shoots up because of your higher EPS,

ROE & dividends.

Example: If your net profit was $25M in Year 10 and you had 10M shares of stock

outstanding, your EPS would be $2.50. (25M/10M = 2.50),

If youve bought back your 2.5M shares, you would have 7.5M million shares

outstanding and your EPS would jump to $3.33. (25M/7.5M=3.33).

Roughly a 40% jump in score.
You Want To Do It Early Because 1. The game limits how much stock you can
buyback a year. It takes on average five years to buy it all back 2. If youre following
the right strategies, your stock price is going to skyrocket it isnt cost effective to
buy stock in the later years. 3. It gives you the option for a debt-equity swap.

3. Buy celebrities with long term contracts in the early stages of the game

Celebrity purchase price normally follows either a bell curve or a logarithmic curve.
It starts out relatively low and then peaks and falls off or peaks and barely increases

during the final years.

Focus on the celebrities with the longest contracts during these first few years. I
suggest paying between 2M & 5M dollars. Use your judgment though, celebrity

pricing normally depends on class metagame than an actual science.

You want to long-term lock in contracts at lower rates to be as effective as possible
An Exception The one exception to this rule is when nobody bids on celebrities in
the practice rounds and multiple teams do poorly. Celebrities can sometimes start out
highly competitive in this situation.

4. Always Predict Materials Prices

-

It is largely responsible for the I just dont know what happened, it said we were

going to make an EPS of $3.50, but we ended up with -$1.50 comments

It is located on the Branded production screen. At the upper left hand side, youll see

a small box that looks like a graph, half filled with green.
The prices of superior and standard materials are based on supply and demand
functions If more teams use a high SQ strategy, the more superior materials will cost
because of the increased demand for superior materials will drive up superior material
prices. The opposite is also true, the more teams perusing a high SQ strategy will

use less standard materials and thus the costs will be lower.
How to implement it: Look at teams strategies and gestimate whether or not they
will be increasing their SQ ratings. If they are increasing their SQ ratings higher
assume superior material costs will rise and vice versa

5. Re-finance loans: If youre employing a successful strategy, you will be carrying debt.
-

It is important to look for opportunities to refinance your outstanding debt to increase

your cash flow.

It is simple to do. First, check each decision round if your interest rate has fallen or

risen because of either an increased credit rating or decreasing interest rates.

Then, look on your Balance Sheet & Cash Flow report to see which loans outstanding
have the higher interest rates. Finally, take out a loan for the same amount while
paying off the existing one. You can group multiple smaller loans together to take
advantage of this as well.