In the exercise described in this paper, players assume the role of retailers of a perishable commodity which is subject to variable demand. Each player makes a decision about the re-order quantity at the beginning of a cycle and penalties are imposed for leftovers or runouts at the end of the cycle. The performance of players can be compared with the optimal rule of a theoretical model, in which the demand distribution is assumed to be stationary. Experiments were conducted to study whether players improved their performance with time, whether managers with industrial experience performed better than players with little or no experience, whether the theoretical model was helpful in improving performance and whether the pattern of decisions was affected by the generated demand data.