Competitive business simulations · since 2003

Ten teams.
One market.
One click a week.

MARS runs sales management and marketing management simulations for college business courses. Students take a district or a product line and compete against the other teams in their section. Everything runs in the browser — nothing to install, nothing to collect, no files to move.

Request professor access Manuals and demo simulations. No cost to evaluate.

Sales Management · District 4 Period 3

Team decisions for a five-person sales district
Rep	Salary	Comm.	Quota	Training
Bob	12,500	8.0%	128,000	Time & Territory
Emily	12,500	8.0%	160,000	People Skills
Kevin	7,500	8.0%	80,000	Product Knowledge
Jen	6,250	8.5%	80,000	Selling Technique
Katie	4,000	9.0%	64,000	Company Orientation

Seasonal index 0.4 Awaiting decisions

A team's decision sheet going into the fourth quarter, where demand runs four times the third. The reps don't all want the same thing — one works for money, one for recognition, one to be left alone.

Two simulations

Pick the one that fits your course.

Both are competitive: one team's decisions change every other team's results. Both are built for undergraduate or graduate sections, and both run the same way.

SMS

Sales Management

Students run a district of five salespeople and compete for sales, share, and contribution to profit.

Each period they set salary and commission, assign quotas and bonuses, book training, decide how closely to supervise, and split each rep's selling time across three classes of account. The reps respond differently, and the way they respond is not obvious from the numbers alone.

Built for Sales Management · Personal Selling
Team size Up to 10 teams a section
Decisions Compensation, quota, training, territory
Reports Profitability, sales potential, market share, rep satisfaction

MMS

Marketing Management

Students run a product line across four market segments as the marketing manager: planning, implementation, and control.

Each period they set retail and wholesale price, fund advertising, promotion, and publicity, size and deploy the sales force, and commit to R&D projects that take several periods to reach market. Where their products land in customers' minds shows up on a perceptual map.

Built for Intro to Marketing · Marketing Management
Section size Works for mass sections
Decisions Price, promotion, sales force, R&D
Reports Perceptual map, brand awareness, profitability by product

How a term runs

Four things happen. One of them is yours.

Students enter their own decisions and pull their own reports. Running a period is a single button. Most adopters spend more time discussing results than administering them.

Before period 1

You create the simulation

Name it, choose the type, and decide how many students go on a team. Hand the name and your email address to the class. That is the setup.

Registration

Students form their own teams

Each team registers itself, names itself, and pays for its own seat — the same way it buys a textbook. No roster to collect, no fees to handle.

Every period

Teams decide, you run it

Teams enter decisions on their own time and can revise until you run the period. Then you click Run Simulation once, and every team's world moves.

After each run

Results come back the same minute

Reports, rankings, and a letter from the district accountant explaining what went right or wrong — so a team that misread the quarter finds out why.

Evidence

Students rated it above the textbook.

Five sections of Sales Management at two universities, 151 students. Each rated the textbook and the simulation on the same fifteen statements.

Textbook MARS simulation

Mean rating on a 9-point scale, where 9 = strongly agree. The simulation scored higher on all fifteen statements; every difference was significant at p < .001 by two-tailed t-test.
Statement	Mean rating, 1–9
Scale

Source: evaluation questionnaires, five Sales Management sections, two universities.

Cost

One hundred dollars, divided.

The price is per team, not per student — so the cost per student is a decision you make when you decide how big the teams are.

$100per team, per term

Students on a team	Cost per student
Two	$50.00
Three	$33.33
Four	$25.00
Five	$20.00

Route one

Students pay directly

The usual arrangement. Nothing is charged to the department, and each team pays online when it registers — so no fee collection lands on you.

Route two

The department pays

We invoice the school for the section and issue access codes. Students register with a code instead of a card.

Route three

Something else

Bookstore bundles, lab fees, grant funding, a purchasing office with its own rules. Tell us what your institution needs and we will work to it.

Access runs six months, or until you delete the simulation — whichever comes first. West Virginia purchasers are charged state sales tax as required.

Next step

Ask for a password and look around.

Professor access is free and carries no obligation. It opens the instructional material and puts working simulations in front of you, so you can play a few periods before deciding anything.

Instructor and student manuals for both simulations
Presentation slides and test questions
Demonstration simulations you can run yourself
The platform to run your own sections once you adopt

Write to

Dr. Robert W. Cook

Author, MARS Simulations

robert.cook@shootformars.com

(304) 276-5322

Request access

Tell us your school, the course, and roughly when it meets. You should have your password within a day.