That's more or less the goal here. World (market) domination and in doing so, the humiliation of between 1 to 8 AI (or human) opponents. It does get slightly more complicated than that, but there in lies the appeal.
The tutorial helps to get ones feet wet where as the fully customisable open game allows you to jump in to a game for you to test your metal (or leather, or one of the hundred or so other commodities). Choosing between farming, mining, manufacturing and retailing (or any combination of the above if you want to take over the whole production chain) gives a wide scope for every game without ever getting bogged down by micro-management.