In this game, the following hot keys are available:

[Esc]              - Display the instructional game menu.
[Back Space] - Go back one instructional step.

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mouse : right single
In the previous instructional game, you set up your first
department store and started to make some money. However, to
survive in a highly competitive market over the long haul, 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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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The product picture itself is a hyper-text button. Click the button
to display its product detail report.

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mouse : left single
Okay, it's time to go back to your department store.

Click here to close the report.

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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 a
product's selling price, 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 instructional games you will learn many new ways to
enhance the sales of your products. Now, take some time to review
what you have just learned and try opening some new department
stores in other cities.

When you are ready to move on to the next instructional game, press
[ESC] and select "Next Game".

If you want some hints, press [ESC] and select "Hints".


