The Markstrat world is a fictitious industrialized country of 80 million inhabitants whose monetary unit is the Markstrat dollar ($). This world does not represent any particular country, market or industrial sector however, it roughly behaves like most markets and the general management and marketing knowledge that you have acquired through business experience or formal education applies to it.
In Markstrat, both inflation and GNP growth are fairly stable and no major political, social or economic event is anticipated in the near future. There are a handful of competing companies that manufacture and market consumer goods.
Initially, the competing companies are identified by a unique letter such as L, M, N, R, S or T. Your first task will be to give a name to your company, starting with this letter and reflecting the spirit within your team.
In most cases, each firm starts in a different situation in terms of product specification, target consumers, brand awareness, market share, distribution coverage, profitability, R&D expertise, etc. Consequently, the marketing strategy of each firm should be adapted to its particular situation. However, Markstrat can be configured so that all firms start in the exact same situation. Your instructor will let you know if you are using one of these competition configurations.
Nevertheless, no firm has a relative advantage over the others and initially many characteristics are common to all firms. For instance, the initial brand portfolio of all companies is comprised of two brands. As mentioned before, each firm will have the opportunity to design and develop new R&D projects and to introduce new products or upgrade existing ones. All R&D departments have the same capabilities to develop new projects in their range of experience. Similarly, all commercial teams are equally qualified to handle distributor relationships.