Report on Capsim Strategy Chester co.

            The initial strategy for Chester was very simple; try and be the best seller in the traditional and low end markets, and use those markets to gain an advantage over the competition. In order to execute this strategy in the first two rounds, the goal was to have equal or higher levels of automation in order to have the most competitive prices in the market.   To gain a higher market share with better contribution margins meant that Chester would be selling more products in those sectors, while also making more money per sensor sold.  The company would also maintain a competitive level in the other markets to capitalize on opportunities to take over those sectors other teams showed weakness on. 

            This strategy changed almost immediately for Chester, switching from trying to make a profit by using its competitive advantage in target markets, to trying to simply lose less money than the competition. To do this Chester used its automation and capacity   to try and maintain a high contribution margin and competitive levels of market share for its products.  This is because the majority of the teams were making good business decisions, making it hard for anyone to make money.  So the team's strategy switched from trying to make money in the markets, to try and lose less money than everyone else.  This was achieved by constantly pushing prices of major markets lower where possible, hopefully unexpectedly, so as to try to make teams take out emergency loans, which have higher interest rates than normal.  To do this we also had to make sure we had accurate sale projection numbers to prevent us from having to take out emergency loans ourselves.  This, combined with our higher contribution margins due to our automation and increased capacity, would allow us to spend less per product. Since the competition was so close, any amount of money saved would be extremely beneficial.