Retailer-Focused Beer Game Application in Teaching the Bullwhip Effect in Supply Chains

This study examines the educational effectiveness of a retailer-focused Beer Game application for teaching the bullwhip effect in retail supply chains.Although Beer Game is a widely used experiential learning tool in supply chain education, the vast majority of existing applications treat supply chain actors as symmetrical roles, and the decisive influence of the retailer's role in the formation of demand fluctuations is only minimally emphasized.This study aims to provide a role-based perspective to the literature by focusing on the central role of retailer decisions in the emergence of the bullwhip effect.The research is based on an in-class Beer Game application conducted with 32 associate degree students.Due to the large class size, the game process was conducted in multiple game cycles using role rotation, ensuring that each participant experienced the retailer role at least once.The quantitative findings presented in the study are based on order, inventory, backorder, and cost data from a representative 10-round game cycle played by participants assuming the retailer role.The quantitative data were analyzed descriptively to reveal how the bullwhip effect strengthens throughout the supply chain in a process-oriented manner.Quantitative findings were supported by qualitative data; open-ended student feedback collected after the game was evaluated.The qualitative findings show that the perception of responsibility assigned to the retailer role increased, awareness of overreacting behavior developed, and students gained systems thinking.The study's findings reveal that the retailer-focused Beer Game design significantly contributes to the internalization of the whiplash effect not only theoretically but also through experiential learning.In this respect, the study proposes a viable model for gamification-based instructional designs in the field of logistics and supply chain education.