Debriefing Questions for Round-7

Theme: Revisiting Strategy: Forecasting & Marketing

Submitted By: Round 7 - Group 11 - Company: Erie; Industry: C134781

Vikalp Sinha PGP/24/310

Medha Jha PGP/24/098

Satvik Chandna PGP/24/052

Karishma Agrawal PGP/24/092

Sneha Singh PGP/24/472

Identify the two occasions where your forecasting went wrong. Why did it go wrong? What
was the impact of it on your financials?

There are teams with more than five products and there are teams with four or less number
products. How does the breath of product affect their product market and financial
performance?

How does the number of products that you offer in your targeted segment affect your
profitability? What is the right number of products for each segment, for your strategy?
Explain

What is ideal market share that your company need to have in each of your targeted
segment, at the end of 8th round, to meet your financial goals

Answers:

1. Forecasting going wrong

Our forecasting went wrong in Round 4.While forecasting, we usually tend to overestimate our
demand so that we do not end up underselling and losing out on potential demand. A little
overestimation also helps in keeping some extra stock which can be utilized in case there is a
sudden surge in demand. In round 4, the market went down and because of that, we had a
large amount of unsold inventory. We observed an impact on the profitability and increased
inventory holding costs in that round.
2. Breadth of products
Companies with a higher breadth of product offerings will be catering to several segments in the
market. This means there will be a higher investment in R&D and if done right, it will reflect
positively on the financials of the company. However, there are risks associated with the same
as well because it is difficult to achieve expertise to serve multiple segments with different
requirements simultaneously and losses can be huge if done wrong.

3. Number of products in each segment

More number of products offered to one segment does result in an increased profitability. For
our strategy, we have tried to stick to a maximum of 2 products in the segments that we are
targeting, that is, low end, traditional and high end segments.
We do not want to exceed 2 products in a segment because it is associated with the risk of
cannibalism. The new products may eat into the sales of the older ones and hence to maintain a
healthy balance of all products in the segment we have chosen a maximum of 2 products.

4. Ideal market share

Since our main focus is on the traditional, low end and high end segments, the ideal market
share that we target by the end of the 8th round is as follows:

Segment Targeted Market Share

Low End Segment 25%

Traditional Segment 15-20%

High End Segment 15-20%