Manufacturing (part Two)

We allready saw the main page, now let’s go to „Production“ page and change the selling price for your product and whom are you going to sell them to.

Next page is „Supply“ page. There you can chose the commodity supplier and the amount of goods you require. The production information page on Virtonomics game site will help you to chose the right amount depending on your factory size. Though, there are other factors to look at – how efficient is the factory, etc. The general rule is, the higher the efficiency levels are the more goods you can produce in you factory.

Next step to talk about is “Sales” page . Sale of goods is realized in case if anybody has ordered it (realized once per 24 hours (turn)).

To sell your product you must set prices and select sale type. There are 4 sale options:

• not for sale — stop sale (used for temporary suspension, for example, if market situation is not favorable);
• sell to any customer — sale without any restrictions;
• only to certain company — sale to specific enterprises of a selected company. Other customers can’t order the goods;
• only to my company — sale to your own enterprises only.

Moreover, you can set specific priorities and change order of your shipments. Information about all your current customers and sales parameters is avaiable in «Sales» section. If there are no orders for your goods, you should lower your price (perhaps, it’s too high), quality (perhaps, it’s too low) and brand.

Retailing

Opening a store and then selling other player’s products to the customers is one of the most complicated in management. But on the other hand yet the most profitable, activities in Virtonomics.

Local suppliers

In game players have to compete not only with other players, but also with local suppliers in cities. These are retail enterprises in a city and originally they had full control of retail market.

Each and everyone retail product in every city has average price and average quality, which means that this product is sold at this price and with this quality – in case if there are no enterprises created by players in the city.

In most of the cases to compete with local suppliers successfully you must offer goods of higher quality at lower price. But that’s not usually the case, as a lot also depends on where the shop is located, what is the customer’s wealth index and overall store’s efficiency.

Preferences of customers

Wealth level is the most important factor to define customers preferences. In cities with low wealth level people spend almost all their money on most needed goods (foodstuff) and they have no big interest in luxury goods. Besides, they pay special attention to the price: they prefer buying cheaper products instead of famous and high-quality goods.

On the contrary in cities with higher wealth level people can afford buying clothes, household equipment, cars and jewelry. In their opinion, high quality is more important than low price. Wealthy customers first of all require good service.

On the picture we can see the price per weak of shoes in red frame. It is lower than sale price in blue frame. Despite the much higher price than the cities average this shoes sells really well, because of its high quality (and brand) and excellent service. Customers preferences often change in favour of one or another goods. These changes can often be unpredictable, however marketing research can reveal consumer trends.