Marketing Simulation Results as Embedded Forms of Program Assessment

Marketing simulations have been gaining increasing entry into marketing curriculum because they facilitate experiential learning that enhances both quantitative and qualitative skills in marketing decision-making. Previous research has examined the impact of student characteristics, simulation execution, and ancillary pedagogical activities on student learning outcomes. This study, however, calls for an additional stream of research to examine benefits of marketing simulations that may be gaining significant attention in actual practice. The advent of web-based simulations allows publishers to gather data on the performance of the broad range of individual, teams, and schools that participate in their simulation at any one time. Web-based simulation publishers are recognizing that tracking output from simulations could provide benchmarks for program assessment purposes. With the benchmark data so readily available, much research is needed to evaluate how appropriately equipped simulations actually are for this purpose.