Industrial marketers should feel quite at home in the INDUSTRAT environment. The simulation is a result of observing various competitive scenarios and extracting the elements which, while distinctive to industrial marketing, provide a fairly complex yet well structured learning environment. For example, industrial purchasing is usually performed by a group of individuals on behalf of an organization. Their needs, the setting and the processes which they follow differ greatly from those in the consumer goods sector.

This has numerous implications for both the design and the execution of strategy in the industrial or business marketing sectors. One must consider the dynamics within groups of suppliers and their customers, the need for alternative sources of supply, the heavy reliance on R&D and the dependence on motivated people in the sales and technical support forces. There is also the complex matter of collaboration with competitors through licensing or other arrangements, the need to understand the vertical nature of derived demand, the cost of switching suppliers etc. INDUSTRAT was designed to encapsulate such considerations.