Strategic Marketing Oriented Business Games: a factor analysis of the participant’s perceptions

Abstract

Today’s ever-changing environment has led educators in a search for new teaching tools that are more participative, creative and vivencial, as the Business Games. This article presents the results obtained in a study of values, attitudes and opinions’ identification with 60 undergraduate students that took part of the discipline “Products, Services and Markets Management” at FEA-USP, first semester of 2005, using the MARKSTRAT Business Game. Its objective was to evaluate the use of more participative, creative and lively teaching tools, as the Business Games, in terms of the final experience, compared to those proposed in the literature. The results show that the use of business games as an andragogical Today’s ever-changing environment has led educators in the search for new teaching tools that are more participative, creative and living, as the Business Games. This article presents the results obtained in a study of values, attitudes and opinions’ identification with 60 undergraduate students that took part of the discipline “Products, Services and Markets Management” at FEA-USP, first semester of 2005, using the MARKSTRAT Business Game. Its objective was to evaluate the use of more participative, creative and lively teaching tools, as the Business Games, in terms of the final experience, compared to those proposed in the literature. The results show that the use of business games as an andragogical teaching tool stimulates the technical skills. It also suggest that transdisciplinary teams could also be an option to better explore the tool’s potential. Key-words: Business games. Marketing. Strategy. Andragogy.