Marketing Effort.” The numbers already on the screen in this column are your company’s values for the
preceding year—you should proceed to enter tentative changes in your company’s marketing effort for the
upcoming year. Your entries in this column, in effect, represent “what if we do this” to try to sell branded
pairs in North America. In the column headed “Your Estimate of the Industry Average”, you’ll see numbers
that represent the average marketing efforts of rivals in the prior year—these numbers reflect the level of
competitive effort your company was up against in the North American market last year. These
prior-year industry averages, of course, may well change in the upcoming year because rival companies
are likely to adjust their marketing efforts so as to improve their own bottom-line performance. If you
suspect that rivals, on average, might lower their prices or increase their S/Q ratings or boost their
advertising in North America, then you should enter your best “guesstimate” of what the industry averages
for wholesale selling price, S/Q rating, advertising, and so on might be in the upcoming year—these
guesstimates, in effect, represent “what if, on average, our rivals do Y ” (where Y represents the level of
competitive effort you are up against in the North American market).