bdubbs wrote:Since the question is answered I hope I'm not a jerk for going off topic here but Eleaza why would you let the average overall quality get so high? I'd imagine the point is to keep out the competition but personally I like to push prices as much as I can until a new competitor enters the market, and if they're small I buy them out.
Well, the simple answer is, this is not my save, and not my game
, however there is advantage going higher in overall rating if you know how to manage it (and I'll explain it later below)
For these screenshots, I just find examples from someone else's save that has a product with enough "gap" between average and local overall rating, so it would be easy to tell they are "different" ratings. A lot of players misunderstand the average as "local competitor", since in the beginning before any competitors exist these two ratings are (about) the same. Without paying attention to product details overtime, some people will mistakenly think these ratings don't change and are the same. (they do change, and they are not the same)
bdubbs wrote:
Actually to the OP that's a good thing to keep in mind, particularly in lower difficulty games where competitors aren't particularly aggressive. As the quality of your product and your brand rating rises you bring the overall market quality up, but the local competition does not improve (they may be able to over time based on macro economic factors but I'm not sure). I almost always use range brand and if you try to sell products at a lower overall quality than the city average it creates negative brand loyalty. If you're the only retailer of a product in your city then you can depress the average quality by raising your price until your overall quality meets the average and then wait for the average to drop by a few points. You can steadily do this until you hit a point where you can't keep raising your prices and keep your sales units fully utilized, or until a competitor enters the market and starts bringing up the average.
The best way to get a competitor out of your market is usually to buy them out because it comes with other benefits but if you have a superior product and are willing to sacrifice your profit then you can drag the city average up to the point your competitor can no longer compete.
Good luck!
Yes, local competitor will change their price and brand, if economic simulation is high. You can think of local competitors as a very passive AI, the so-called local advertise income share in local media firm's income graph shows local ad expenses. And the price adjustment is very slow usually related to current inflation rate (if set to ON) and average price. Even their quality changes when the average quality on the market changes, they will follow the "trend".
Normally higher overall rating, especially over 100, gives you very high market dominance where it acts as a "deterrent" for AIs to even think about joining in the competition. A lot of time this actually more "convenient" and cost less than later squeeze them out or buy them out. And with Sub DLC, sometimes it's even better to just let AI as subs and leave the micromanagement to controlled AI subs and reap the profit as dividends. Most of the time overall rating don't change the total revenue much, and the economic status has much higher impact. But for certain products with the right price/brand/quality concern combination, you can break" the standard base revenue and actually increase the total market. An example below :
The base revenue of this city's wine is about 70 million a year with no one but just local competitors (for 30 years). Where the overall rating is just 8 (notice the average is 7, there's always some very small rounding down of average ratings so the "local competitors" has a natural tendency to "dominate" the market share where no one is competing)
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With just 2 competitive price on the market to dragged down the average price, but the total market revenue for wine still maintained about 70 millions a year, even though the average overall rating jumped to 52. The regular jump up and down is the economic status cycle, it has much higher impact than anything else.
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But we can sort of "break" the "standard" revenue by increase the overall rating to 104 with very high quality and brand and total market dominance, the total revenue of wine jumped to near 100 million a year. (and you can see the local competitors tried to compete with me and changed their quality and price, just very slowly). Notice, the same goes for yogurt, and you don't have to go over 100 overall rating, just with enough high quality and brand, depends on concern you can break the standard revenue (not necessarily with more profit though, sometimes the increase in cost outweighs the increase in revenue)
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