Power Game Pak 2

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WELCOME TO CAPITALISM! In this lesson, you will learn how to set up a department store to sell products. You will also see some of the information reports that let you assess your success in the market. In this tutorial, the following hot keys are available: [Esc] - Quit the tutorial. [Back Space] - Go back one tutorial step. pos : 136, 131 First, we need to introduce you to the game controls. Look at the regional map window. The world in Capitalism is generated randomly, so it is different in each game. pos : 109, 106 The words on the map are city names. As in the real world, business prospers where people come together. The cities will be where most of your business activities take place. pos : 89, 72 Notice the highlight box in the regional map. pos : 428, 142 The area surrounded by the highlight box is magnified in the detailed map window. pos : 103, 91, 116, 103 mouse : left single You can click any area of the regional map to show that area in the detailed map. Try clicking here. pos : 428, 142 You can also scroll the detailed map by using the scroll bars at the sides of the window or by right-clicking on a site in the map to center it on that spot. Now that you have a basic understanding of the world, it's time for you to build your first company. pos : 276,312,313,334 mouse : left single Click the Build button. pos : 37,290 These are types of firms that you can build in Capitalism. pos : 56,260 A department store is the easiest to set up and operate, so that is where you will start. The location of the department store can greatly influence its profitability. Here are a few suggestions for a good department store site. - Select a city with sufficient population to support strong sales. - Building the firm near the city center will attract more customers. Remember though, that a good location always has a higher land cost. pos : 326,29,613,222 wait : 20,400 checkpoint : 1 Now choose a location for your department store in the detail window. Click the "Continue Tutorial" button when you've made your decision. pos : 490,453 The cost to build this store is shown here. pos : 284,15 You have $10,000,000 cash and can afford it without difficulty. pos : 571,417,619,453 mouse : left single Now press the "Build" button to build your first firm. pos : 277,257,312,279 mouse : left single Congratulations! You have just set up your first department store. Now click the Information button to look at your company. pos : 85,390 This is a picture of the interior of your department store. pos : 38,281 This is the logo of your company. In the tutorial, we have selected the logo for you. In a new game, you can select your logo from a list of choices. pos : 103,281 This is your portrait. It doesn't look like you? Don't worry, you can select it in a new game, too. pos : 211,276 This area shows some key information about your department store. pos : 214,390 This is the revenue graph for your company. It has no revenue yet, but we will take care of that in a few moments. pos : 466,295 This area shows the goods that your department store is selling, none currently. But we are going to add some soon. pos : 276,285,313,308 mouse : left single Click the "Layout" button to see the internal layout of your company. pos : 448,361 There are nine slots here. Each slot represents a space where you can set up a business functional unit. pos : 334,259,397,314 mouse : left double checkunit : 1, 10L Let's set up a purchasing unit right now. Double-click on this slot. pos : 200,420 This is your purchasing unit and these are your employees. You have just created jobs for the city. We and the mayor of the city thank you for your contribution. pos : 418,259,480,313 mouse : left double checkunit : 2, 12 You also need to set up a sales unit. Double-click on this slot, and select a sales unit. Now you have both the purchase and sales units. But you still need to tell the workers in the purchasing unit to move the purchased goods to the sales unit. pos : 399,282,415,292 mouse : left double Link these two units together by switching on the linkage line between them. Double-click on this line. pos : 334,259,397,314 mouse : left single Now, your company is ready to operate and earn some money. Let's purchase some goods from outside suppliers, which in turn will be sold to the customers. Click the purchasing unit. pos : 172,340,238,354 mouse : left single Next, click the "Link Supplier" button. In Capitalism, you can produce goods locally or import them from overseas countries. At the beginning of the game, there aren't too many good local suppliers yet, so we will import some goods. pos : 39, 103, 50, 113 mouse : left double In this tutorial, the government has built two seaports. One supplies consumer goods and the other supplies raw materials. Double-click here to highlight the seaport. action: next_day pos : 372,289 These are the products available from the seaport. Before picking a product, you must consider several factors. The most important are price, quality, and brand. pos : 404,373 The price is shown here, but our total cost also includes a freight cost related to the distance between your department store and the seaport. pos : 370,440 The quality and brand of the products are represented as numbers. Since brands of imported goods are probably unknown to local buyers, their brand ratings are always zero unless you arrange some advertising for them. pos : 368,462 The overall rating is calculated based on the price, quality, and brand rating. Low price, high quality, and a high brand rating assure a high overall rating. pos : 398, 310 The overall rating is displayed here as an indicator. Each portion represents a different aspect of the product and their combined rating becomes the overall rating of the product. The yellow portion represents the price attractiveness of the product, the green portion represents its quality, and the orange portion represents its brand rating. Since the product's brand rating is zero, you do not see any orange portion right now. It seems that you could simply pick the product with the highest overall rating. But you must consider other factors, such as the freight cost, demand of the product in your city, and the products offered by your competitors. We will discuss each of these factors, but right now let's just pick a product to keep things moving along. pos : 277,257,312,279 mouse : left single Click the "Link" button to establish a purchase link with the supplier. This tells your purchasing unit to buy this product. pos : 38,284 Your staff is now preparing to take delivery of the goods from the supplier. In Capitalism, you only need to tell the purchasing unit which product you want to buy. Your staff will keep purchasing the product until the supply of the product is no longer available. pos : 334,259,397,314 Currently, the goods you have ordered are still on their way to your department store. pos : 334,259,397,314 action: next_day Now they are being unloaded... pos : 334,259,397,314 action: enable_next_day This area shows the stock of the product in the unit. Each box represents one cargo of the product. Each cargo can store a number of units of the product. The number of units a cargo can hold varies from product to product. For some expensive products, such as cars, one cargo can hold only a few units of the product. For lower-cost products, such as shampoo, one cargo can hold up to several thousand units of the product. This makes the total value of all cargoes of all types of products about the same. pos : 418,259,480,313 Now, the goods are moving to the sales unit from the purchasing unit. Once the goods reach the sales unit, you are in the retail business. pos : 277,257,312,279 mouse : left single To find out sales information for the product, click the Information button. pos : 366, 293 This browser shows products that are being sold in the department store. At the sides of each product picture, there are several bar and line indicators. By reading these indicators, you find out how well the product is selling. pos : 360, 324 Underneath the picture of the product, there are two horizontal lines. The upper blue one is the supply line and the lower red one is the demand line. Since the product has just been launched into the market, there isn't much demand yet. Thus, the red line is extremely short and looks like a small dot. pos : 360, 324 If the supply line is longer than the demand line, the supply of the product is more than the demand. This implies that the product's profitability might not be fully exploited yet. It has the capacity to meet more demand and generate more revenue. pos : 360, 324 Conversely, if the demand line is longer than the supply line, this indicates that the firm is not able to supply enough goods to meet the demand. In this situation, try to lift the supply, because any additional supply will be turned into sales. pos : 408, 305 When your product begins to gain ground in the market, you see a red vertical bar showing the market share of the current product in the city. If the length of the bar is close to its maximum, your product is dominating the market in this city. pos : 402, 324 Another indicator you see here is the brand owner indicator. It shows the corporate color of the brand owner of each product. pos : 552, 389 The sale information for the highlighted product in the browser is shown here. Three types of graphs are available: revenue, quantity sold and gross profit. Select the graph you want to see by pressing the appropriate button above the graph. action : disable_next_day You now have a basic understanding of how a department store operates and have set up a sound one. pos : 335, 261, 388, 314 mouse : right single However, to survive in a highly competitive market, you must understand the market status of your company, as well as where your competitors stand. To help you, Capitalism has several market analysis tools. The first one you should examine is the product detail report. Right-click on the product picture to display it, now. pos : 440, 260 Here is the product detail report. First, let's look at the product browser. It lists all products of the same type currently being sold in the city, including yours and those of your competitors. The price, quality rating, and brand rating of each product are shown. To get more information about a specific product, simply highlight it in the browser. You then see the details related to price, brand, and quality displayed in the lower section of the report. These data may seem complicated, but they are just a condensed form of what you will learn in later lessons on manufacturing and advertising. For now, we will ignore these items. pos : 116, 169 In the upper part of the report, there are two graphs. The left one shows the combined sales of the current product type in the current city over the past 12 months, while the right one shows the sales of the highlighted product only. pos : 168, 438 In the default setting, revenue data are shown in the graphs. If you click the "Qty Sold Graph" button, then quantity sold data are displayed instead. pos : 222, 175 To the right of the graphs are a pair of pie charts. The left one shows each producer's share in the market and the right one shows each retailer's share in the market. You can identify the owning corporation by the color of the pie sections. The white section represents the combined market share of all local competitors in the city. pos : 384, 185 As just mentioned, there are local competitors in each city. Although their firms are not shown in the game map, they do compete directly with corporations in the game. Sometimes they may even be the major competing force in the market. You can refer to this area for the average price, quality rating, brand rating, and overall rating of the goods that the local competitors in the city are selling. pos : 459, 184 Next to the information about the local competitors, you see the average price, quality rating, brand rating, and overall rating of all products from both corporations and local competitors. By comparing your numbers to the averages, you get an overview of your competitive position in the city. When consumers buy a product, they usually consider several factors. The three most important factors are price, quality, and brand. The importance of these three factors, however, varies from product to product. For example, when buying a pair of sport shoes, a consumer is concerned more about the brand than the price. In contrast, when buying a piece of frozen meat, a consumer is usually concerned more about the price and less about the brand. pos : 537, 164 Based on this consumer behavior, the game assigns a set of predefined values to each product. These are "price concern," "quality concern," and "brand concern." They are shown as percentages; their sum is always 100%. For example, when a consumer is buying a product with 50% price concern, 30% quality concern, and 20% brand concern, the foremost criterion in the consumer's selection is price, with quality second, and brand last. pos : 480, 230 You may have noticed that these concern numbers are also shown on the top of the browser, next to their descriptions. This lets you get a quick glimpse of the concern numbers while you are reading the information in the browser. pos : 170, 95 Another important number is the necessity index. A high index value means that the product is necessary to people in their daily life. The demand for necessary goods is fairly constant, as people must buy them even if the value they offer is not attractive. The attractiveness of a product is represented by its overall rating. pos : 170, 95 In contrast, the demand for non-necessary goods is strongly influenced by the attractiveness of the goods. Thus, sometimes, cutting price does not result in reduced profit, as it can stimulate the demand. The increased demand may more than offset the reduced profit margin. pos : 450, 89 This report also allows you to look at the market information for other cities. You can select a city you are interested in from this list. The population of each city is shown next to the city name in brackets. pos : 309, 429, 395, 442 mouse : left single The product summary report shows much the same information, but on several products at a time. It is useful when you want general information on several products at once, rather than all the information on a single product. Let's look at that report now. Click here to display it. pos : 134, 190 This report has a lot in common with the product detail report. The most obvious similarity is the sales graph. It shows the combined sales of the current product type in the current city over the past 12 months, just like the one in the product detail report. pos : 233, 194 The pie charts are also no different from those in the product detail report. The left one shows each producer's share of the market and the right one tells each retailer's share of the market. There are several additional features in this report. One of the most useful features is display filtering. You can control the types of products listed in the report by setting the display filters. There are four display filters in this report. pos : 77, 64 The first filter is the "Product Availability Filter." If you set it to "Has Trade Sales," the report shows only products that are available in the trading market. If you set it to "Has Retail Sales," then only products that currently have corporate retail sales are displayed. pos : 200, 64 The second filter is the "Product Category Filter." Set it to "Consumer Goods" to show only consumer goods. Set it to "Industrial Goods" to show only industrial goods. pos : 334, 76 The third filter is the "Corporation Filter." If this filter is set to a specific corporation instead of "All" corporations, the report will list only those products that are being produced or retailed by that corporation. pos : 500, 90 The final filter is the "City Filter." If this filter is set to "All Cities," the report shows the combined sales of the listed products in all cities. If it is set to a specific city, then only the sales information of that specific city will be shown. It also shows the population of each city next to the city name. pos : 280, 310, 350, 370 To browse through the data, use the scroll bar or click the body area of the browser. If you click the upper half of the body area, the browser scrolls up. Likewise, if you click the lower half of the body area, the browser scrolls down. pos : 67, 195 The product picture itself is a hyper-text button. Click the button to display its product detail report. pos : 304, 426, 324, 441 mouse : left single Okay, it's time to go back to your department store. Click here to close the report. pos : 430, 397 After reading the reports, you may need to take some actions to compete successfully in the market. You can react to competition by adjusting the selling price of your products. To change the selling price of a product use the "New Price" spinner and press the "Confirm" button to confirm the change. Price cutting is probably not the best way to outperform your competitors. In future tutorials you will learn many new ways to enhance the sales of your products. Take some time to review what you have just learned and when you are ready move on to the more advanced tutorials.