As a new Marketing Assistant Trainee you have a lot to learn before you can take over management of one of our most important brands, All-round. One key to developing effective marketing strategies is to make informed decisions based on thorough analysis of research information. Your first assignment introduces you to the research reports that we use on a daily basis.

You will have access to many market research reports in the navigation buttons on the left side of the PharmaSim Simulation screen. There are only a few reports covering the "Channel" category (and they are interspersed in the Market and Survey menu items) but, much more "Channel" information is found in the Student Manual (accessed in the "Resources" button on the PharmaSim home page). The following category reports are organized in PharmaSim in the following five categories:

1. Company: Provides detailed information about company performance.

2. Market: Provides information on overall market performance and trends affecting the simulation environment.

3. Competition: Provides information necessary to understand what competitors are doing, and if they are succeeding.

4. Channel: Provides information about the distribution channel.

5. Survey: Provides information about consumer buyer behavior.

There is much information presented in these reports. The primary objective of this assignment is for each team member to become familiar with the depth of information available to them to make marketing decisions, and to accomplish that without information overload. Therefore, each team member will develop an understanding of the research reports available in a particular category of reports. The team leader will then collate and upload the team members' insights. In that way, the team members can then read the insights of the other members of the team to develop a deeper understanding of the reports available to them beyond the category they studied.