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_____
the game
one two three
diagram
applications
at work
the creators
download
orders
doctor dan
make contact
_____
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What role
does a management decision maker for a company selling electricity to
households have as a shadowprice.com
player?
The player decides:
- whether to
play a single game for profit and market share or a series of games that
assesses her staying power.
- what the
market looks like--the time households take to switch providers, whether
the incumbent is stodgy or aggressive, when competitors must advertise
their brand names, how and how much cut-throat competition and collusion
will determine her fortune.
- what price
and service offerings will win for her company.
- whether she
manages her interactions with other challengers or shadowprice.com does.
- how much of
shadowprice.com innards she wants to
see or print.
- whether to
play along by day or let shadowprice.com run on autopilot while she sleeps.
What
decisions does shadowprice.com reserve for
itself?
The player's power
procurement costs are drawn at random. Shadowprice.com makes it twice as
hard for her to draw the lowest-cost generating options as it does for
other challengers to the incumbent, unless she lets autopilot make decisions for her, and tells it
that she has access to lowest cost power. While she decides how her
product should look, shadowprice.com decides service
offerings for other competitors.
To get things started,
shadowprice.com picks base- and
peak-load retail prices for her company and all other companies that would
make households absolutely oblivious to and indifferent about who sells
them electricity.
...except for the
troublesome fact that some competitors can and sometimes do offer
services households would rather have that aren't available from
other providers.
|
| ...and
if the player didn't pick these services households value...well,
what could you do for
her? |
In
addition,
shadowprice.com makes absolutely
certain the Value Optimizer doesn't let the player down. Unless she gets
trapped by a price war, she'll make at least as much money as she did with
her starting prices and brand name advertising, if she chose to
advertise.
| ...and
it makes absolutely certain the Value Optimizer doesn't let her
competitors down. Unless they get trapped by a price war, they'll
make at least as much money as they did with their starting prices
and brand name advertising, if
shadowprice.com decided they
should advertise. |
Shadowprice.com treats the player's
staying power for a year in this market like a fair lottery drawing for
dollars and end-of-year market share, except that market share is more
important than making $money$. A player simply must have presence at year's end
for shadowprice.com to award hits that add
to her risk-assessment batting average. So do you if you want to be around
for a next year of competition in your market.
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