AI: Retail Store One Product

[WilliamMGary]

I decided to try and investigate the AIs best practices/behaviors and see if it could provide me with some insight/techniques which I can incorporate into my business. One of the strangest things I've noticed about the AI is that "some" of them will open a store and stock one product and advertise it. They would have a large retail market sure for that product and I noticed another player mention that was a strategy they use.

In this example the AI retail expertise is 20 (low) and his company is not the manufacture of the product in question and he's barely making a profit though he has a large % of retail share. Is this good for his business or bad?

[Esoteric Rogue]

That picture of the firm, you look at the profit graph for the product... it looks to be a fresh product, as the product profit graph has no data before a month or two ago, we can't deterrmine anything from that, yet. Whatever the history of this firm was, it wan't detergent until just recently. He's able to set a high enough markup he should be profitable. So far though, sales are still climbing.

[ceomoses]

Not sure if that's a good or bad idea. It probably depends on the particular product. In any case, I don't like that it is even viable, really. Makes me think there should be some sort of mechanic where the more types of products available, the more customers the store would have. Like in your example: who would go to a store that sells nothing but detergent? Customers are much more likely to go to a store that sells not only detergent, but other items they need to buy.

Reminds me of the store in the movie, UHF. "Spatula City- We sell spatulas... and that's all!"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XbCWmY0eqY

[Esoteric Rogue]

who would go to a store that sells nothing but detergent?

What about a store that sells nothing but cars?

[lucks]

great marketing makes a bad product fail faster.
i dont think the ai is trying to ruin the manufacturers brand rating, but it might be fun to advertise a competitioners low quality products, if they use range or corporate brand strategy. just thinking.
edit:
maybe the companies are closely related, so advertising might make sense. you might like to check the ownerships of both companies.

[WilliamMGary]

great marketing makes a bad product fail faster.
i dont think the ai is trying to ruin the manufacturers brand rating, but it might be fun to advertise a competitioners low quality products, if they use range or corporate brand strategy. just thinking.
edit:
maybe the companies are closely related, so advertising might make sense. you might like to check the ownerships of both companies.

Good idea I will check it out and update this post.