Students inherit Marston Atlas — a smart-home hardware startup with cash, a second-gen product, and a market that already has heavyweight incumbents. Five rounds. Five segments. Real 4P decisions every quarter. No AI rivals; the scoreboard is the cohort.
Maps to your syllabus
A four-quarter sim teaches launch; a five-quarter sim teaches consequence. R1’s archetype constrains R3’s competitive position; R3’s position dictates R5’s defensive options. The middle rounds force students to decide whether the plan they wrote on day one still holds — and to defend their answer with data the engine surfaces, not vibes.
Learning outcomes
Pick a defensible segment
Tech, Value, Luxury, Busy Professionals, Families — pick one, defend it with features and price, refuse the rest.
Operate the 4Ps as a system
Product, price, place, promotion — judged on internal fit, not on any single decision.
Read research, then change your mind
R2 is for course-correcting. Buy the right consumer-insight study; adjust the lever that matters.
Compete inside a cohort
No AI rivals — your scoreboard is your classmates. Read the lanes the cohort opens up, then own one.
R1 sets the position. R2 is the cheapest course-correction. R3 forces a fight inside the lanes the cohort opened up. R4 tunes the engine before the final push. R5 spends the runway. Students who hold R1 across all five come out ahead of the ones who rewrite it every quarter.
Pick a lane
Pick an archetype. Set features to match the target segment. Price at the segment’s ideal. Hit visibility — clear the $120K ad floor. Don’t try to win every segment.
Case study this round
Netflix · value exchange, the 4Ps, and defining the competition
Read the signal
First results in. You see who actually bought — some matches your target, some is a surprise. Cheapest course-correction round of the run. Buy Consumer Insights if your R1 hypothesis didn’t land.
Case study this round
Spotify · tiered segmentation and platform economics
Own the lane
Peer teams have reacted to R1-R2. The cohort has sorted itself into lanes — some crowded, some open. Double down on what’s working in your segment; cut the spends that didn’t convert. Brand assets start doing real work.
Case study this round
Nike · brand equity and channel strategy as brand strategy
Tune the engine
The big strategic bets are made. This is the engine-tuning round — small changes to media mix, sales force, customer service have outsized leverage now. Squeeze the lever that’s underperforming.
Case study this round
Amazon · channel power and the administered VMS
Spend the runway
Final round. No round after this. Spend everything that compounds inside this round; save nothing for next quarter. If you’re leading: protect the segments you own. If you’re behind: make the bet you wouldn’t have made in R1.
Case study this round
Apple · strategic control and the services pivot
Every round, students push five levers — product, price, place, promotion, and people. The engine doesn’t score any one of them in isolation; it scores how well the five fit together against the chosen segment’s preferences. A premium price with mass-market channels loses to a boring strategy that respects what the segment actually wants.
What students actually see
The five levers are introduced in the briefing, surfaced as tabs in the decision form, and replayed on the round-results panel. The research dashboard exists so students can buy the data that explains why a lever underperformed instead of guessing.
Product
Pick the archetype; set the feature mix (Integration, UI, Security). The archetype is the strategic commitment R2-R5 build on.
In-game: Tech · Value · Luxury · Busy · Families
Price
Price at the segment’s ideal — sensitivity varies wildly. Value-Seekers punish a $50 overshoot; Luxury punishes a discount.
In-game: Ideal price band · sensitivity coefficient
Place
Channel split between online, retail, and direct. Families want a store associate; Tech wants a checkout flow.
In-game: Online · retail · direct
Promotion
Media mix and ad spend. TV builds household trust; influencers convert Tech and Luxury. Hit the visibility floor or none of the lever matters.
In-game: TV · social · influencer · search
People
Sales force size and CX investment. Families and Luxury need humans in the loop; Tech notices when CX slips and tells their friends.
In-game: Sales force · customer service
Every round produces a decision sheet and a market-share scoreboard you can review in the instructor dashboard. Case-study answers are submitted alongside and auto-graded against your answer key.
Archetype · segment · 4Ps
Holding Tech-Forward. Holding $349. Trimming TV, doubling influencer + search. Hired two reps for direct channel — R1 retail mix underperformed.
Segment
Tech
Price
$349
Media
Influencer-led
What the engine surfaces
“Tech share gained on influencer-led media. Value share slipped — price still reads premium to that segment. The Families lane is wide open; two cohort teams abandoned it this round.”
The fastest way to evaluate the module is to take a guided tour of Round 1 — same brief, same decision form, same research dashboard, same results panel your students see, prepopulated with sample inputs so you can click through and read the reveal without grading your own work. We recommend doing it before assigning.
Already adopted? Open the instructor dashboard →
Course wizard
Roster size auto-allocates teams; pick 4 or 5 rounds at setup.
Teams or individual
Run it as a cohort scoreboard, or assign one Marston per student.
Five case studies
Netflix, Spotify, Nike, Amazon, Apple — auto-graded against your answer key.
Canvas-ready CSV
Export the full gradebook on demand.