An Interdisciplinary Study of the Impact of Playing A Marketing Simulation Game on Student Knowledge of Management Accounting/Finance Principles

Abstract

"An interdisciplinary study of student knowledge of accounting/finance principles in concert with their application in a marketing simulation game was undertaken in three sections of an Introduction to Marketing. The subjects were 454 second year marketing students who took an accounting/finance knowledge test composed of 14 multiple choice questions focused on understanding definitions and making calculations for selected concepts including unit contribution margin, inventory carrying costs, working capital, gross margins, return on sales, straightforward breakeven calculation, current ratio and mark-ups. A total of 368 students agreed to participate in the study from which 308 usable responses were collected, a 67.8% response rate. The study employed a simple pretest-posttest design resulting in a pretest average score of 42.4% (32.7% corrected for guessing) and a posttest average score of 55.5% (43.7% corrected for guessing) for the accounting/finance test. Paired t-test comparisons of pretest versus posttest scores for both uncorrected and corrected for guessing results were significantly different at the .000 level. The overall conclusion was that the marketing simulation experience led to an improvement in knowledge and application of accounting/finance principles. This study provides further evidence for the external validity of business simulation games. Acknowledgements: The research undertaken in this paper was funded by a grant from the Certified Management Accountants of Ontario "