Hi Everyone,
Welcome to the fifth economics contest results post for 2023. The Ice Cream Game contest is a brand new contest for 2023. The contest tests participants’ ability to select a location that will attract the most customers to buy their ice cream. This contest will return later this year as part of the Economics Challenge Series.
The ‘Ice Cream’ Game requires participants to select a beach and then a location on that beach to set-up an ice cream stand. The stand attracts customers based on its proximity to customers. The stand can only attract customers that do not need to pass another ice cream stand (competitor) to reach it. The ice creams sold by each stand are identical. Therefore, participants cannot compete on price or quality of product.
The objective of the game is to obtain the most customers. If two participants obtain the same number of customers, the participant who entered first wins.
Responses to the contest are made in the comments section of the post. The account with the winning entry will receive 30 Hive Power and the first 12 entries will be given upvotes.
The format of the required entry is explained in detail in the contest itself. For a more detailed explanation, you should read the contest post or watch the contest series introduction video, which also explains this contest and the other upcoming contests for this year.
Table 1 contains the locations selected by each participant.
Note: Participants in red are not considered as they selected a location taken by another participant.
Table 2 contains the number of customers if there was just one ice cream seller (Value). It also contains the number of customers if we consider the additional customers attracted by more ice cream sellers on the beach (fin Value).
| Beach | Minimum | Maximum | Value | Fin Value |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| West | 400 | 600 | 419 | 587 |
| East | 400 | 1200 | 954 | 1813 |
| South | 500 | 700 | 638 | 1021 |
The values used in Table 2 have been used to determine the number of customers the participants’ ice cream stand received based on their locations. See Table 3 for the results of this contest.
Congratulations to 
The Ice Cream Game is considerably less complex than most of the other games in the Economics Contest Series. There are three important areas that participants should consider before selecting a location.
The expected number of customers for the beach. It is better to select a beach that attracts more customers in respect to its length. The mean number of customers is easy to calculate as a uniform distribution is used. A higher mean is also likely to attract more ice cream stands. This will further increase the number of customers to the beach. However, this also increases the risk of being surrounded by other ice cream stands; thus, limiting the number of customers.
The number of ice cream stands in close proximity. It is better to select a location that is not close to other ice cream stands. At the time of entry, this is difficult to determine as a participant entering later could choose the location next to yours. To reduce the chances of this happening, it might be wise to select a location next to an undesirable location. The least desirable locations are the end locations. Therefore, the second from the end location is likely to attract relatively more customers in a contest with a high number of entries.
Timing of entry. Entering early has the advantage of winning tiebreakers, which is important in a game where many participants are likely to attract the same number of customers. However, entering early leaves the participant blind to the actions of others. It is possible that his or her location could become surrounded by later entries. Entering too late puts a participant at a disadvantage as all the good locations have probably been taken. Entering reasonably early is likely to be better than entering very early (e.g. in the first three) or late (e.g. after the 10th). This timing of entry is most advantageous when there are few entries or the when the actions of other participants are not strategic (e.g. selecting end locations).
If you want to read any of my other posts, you can click on the links below. These links will lead you to posts containing my collection of works. These 'Collection of Works' posts have been updated to contain links to the Hive versions of my posts.
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