Edexcel GCSE Business Controlled Assessment Task 1 Edexcel GCSE Business Controlled Assessment Workbook Published by Pearson, ISBN: 978-1-84690-692-3 Controlled assessment task updates September 2009 to May 2010 Task 1: To what extent does the business you have chosen target different market segments? If you choose this question, there are a number of approaches you may consider in carrying out the research. You could: spend some time observing the number and type of people going into the business carry out a short survey trying to identify key market segment characteristics, which may include some or all of the following: age range gender income locality/region ethnicity religion socio-economic group. conduct an interview with the business owner on what he or she thinks are the key market segments (if any). carry out secondary research to identify the market segments for the business you have chosen to investigate. To address the question, you need to think about the following: What type of good or service does the business provide? Does the business you have chosen target particular market segments? Is the good/service produced targeted at particular types or groups of people (for example, if the business designed wedding dresses, the target market would be obvious).
Edexcel GCSE Business Controlled Assessment Task 1 If you identify three or four particular market segments, is any one more important than the others and why? Does the business provide a good or service that targets a wide range of market segments? If so, the answer to the question may be not to a great extent at all. Your conclusion needs to answer the question. Are market segments extremely important to the business (in the case of the wedding dress designer, the answer would be Yes); quite important; only of some importance; hardly important; or not important at all? Whatever your conclusion, you must ensure that you justify it by referring back to the analysis you presented earlier.
Edexcel GCSE Business Controlled Assessment Task 2 Task 2: To what extent is creativity important for the business you have chosen? A clue to answering this question is that creativity might be important but there could also be other factors that are equally or more important. You need to be able to balance the importance of creativity against other factors that are important for the business. (See the last paragraph for a suggestion of what some of these other factors might be.) The answer to the question will depend on the type of business you have chosen. Some businesses might see creativity as extremely important (for example, small marketing and advertising companies, hairdressing salons offering fashion styles, nail salons and tattoo parlours), but others may not, considering other things such as employing the right sort of staff or managing cash flow as more important. You might also need to think about what creativity means in the context of your business. In businesses that are established and reasonably successful, creativity may relate to ways in which existing business operations are tweaked to make them even more successful. Creativity is not simply about developing new products but about new ways of doing things, which may include looking at ways to improve efficiency or reducing costs. Research for this question may well be based on observation and/or an interview with the business owner. If you are observing, look to see if there have been changes in the way the business does things and if there are new products or services that have been developed. If you conduct an interview, you need to plan your questions carefully to ensure you not only ask about creativity and how the business thinks and acts creatively, but also about how important the business feels creativity is in relation to other things it does. Having developed your analysis of the three or four key points you want to mention (one of them obviously being creativity), you need to weigh them up to arrive at a final judgement. In addressing the To what extent part of the question, you have to make a decision based on whether you think creativity is extremely important to the business; very important; quite important; not very important; or of no importance at all, and be able to explain why. The why part of the question may relate to what is meant by important. To address this, you may have to refer back to the type of business. If it is a business which has lots of competitors and which relies on being creative for its competitive edge, it is likely that creativity is very important. It may be that the business needs to be creative but feels that price, quality, customer service, staff motivation or sound cash flow management are other factors which have to be considered and which may be more important.
Edexcel GCSE Business Controlled Assessment Task 3 Task 3: To what extent are determination and initiative the main qualities required of the entrepreneur you have chosen to run his or her business successfully? This is a question looking at the qualities of entrepreneurs. You will need to set these two particular qualities against some of the other qualities that entrepreneurs need, which the specification says includes: the ability to make decisions a willingness to take risks the ability to plan and persuade the ability to show leadership the role of luck in business success/failure. You do not need to cover all these points remember you will have to identify three or four key points. If determination and initiative are the main qualities you are analysing, you will need to identify and analyse two or three others. Which qualities you select will depend on the entrepreneur you choose to focus your investigation on. The key source of research for this question is going to be the contact you make with an entrepreneur. Remember that anyone running a business is an entrepreneur. We might think of Sir Richard Branson or Sir Alan Sugar as being entrepreneurs and they are but anyone who decides to run a business, however small, is also an entrepreneur. You may know of a friend who runs his or her own business (it might be as an electrician, painter and decorator, carpet fitter, pub landlord, cycle repair shop owner, florist, market stall trader, farmer, etc.) or have a parent who runs their own business. Any of these are useful sources of information. The main method of finding out the information for this question is likely to be an interview with the entrepreneur. You might also look at interviews with others, which you can find online. Some suggested links are given below, but make sure that the interview you select gives you useful information and is based primarily on a small business. http://entrepreneurs.about.com/od/interviews/interviews_with_entrepreneurs.htm http://www.retireat21.com/interviews/ http://www.entrepreneurship-interviews.com/blog/entrepreneur-interviews-list/ If you do interview a local entrepreneur, make sure you think carefully about the type of questions that you want to ask to ensure the interview gives you some useful information. The interview might be the key source of information for this question, so it is important to get it right to give sufficient information to help you answer the question. You can use the template in Chapter 5 of the workbook to help you plan. Your conclusion will have to balance out the importance placed by your entrepreneur on determination and initiative in relation to the other two or three qualities you are considering. Your judgement will have to say whether determination and initiative are the most important qualities, or whether one of the others qualities is more important.
Edexcel GCSE Business Controlled Assessment Task 4 Task 4: What is the most important factor in helping the business you have chosen to deliver high levels of customer satisfaction? Before starting this question, make sure that you fully understand the meaning of the term customer satisfaction. In Edexcel GCSE Business: Introduction to Small Business (Pearson) it is defined as a measure of how much products meet customers expectations. You will have to identify three or four key factors that define customer expectations in relation to the business you have chosen. This might vary depending on the business, but may typically include standard of service, convenience, quality, value for money, knowledge of the staff, after-sales service, how well the staff know the customer and anticipate their needs, the variety of services offered, etc. Small businesses invariably place a great deal of emphasis on customer satisfaction because many of them rely on repeat custom, so ensuring customers are satisfied is an important part of their business. There will be a variety of ways to collect information for this question. You can talk to the business owner, make some personal observations of how customer satisfaction is catered for, conduct a small-scale survey of customers, look at the business s website if available, talk to friends and relatives about their experiences, etc. Once you have identified three or four key factors, you need to analyse each of them. Try to identify the features that make each factor important in customer satisfaction and how it is measured. For example, if you focus on quality, what is it about the product or service that gives it quality and how importantly do customers rate this in relation to the other factors you have chosen? In your conclusion, make sure that you address the question, and make a judgement about which of the factors you have identified is the most important in relation to the particular business you have chosen. Use the templates in Chapter 7 of the workbook to help you plan how you will demonstrate the evaluation skills that are so important in the conclusion to the answer.
Edexcel GCSE Business Controlled Assessment Task 5 Task 5: To what extent have recent changes in exchange rates affected the business you have chosen to investigate? You will need to have carried out some investigation into a number of things in order to answer this question. In what ways are exchange rates relevant for the business you have chosen? Does the business sell abroad (export) or does it buy goods and components from abroad (import), or a combination of the two? Where does it buy from and sell to? Depending on where the business buys from and sells to, what has happened to the sterling exchange rate against that particular currency over the last six months or year? You may have to do some calculations to show how the change in the exchange rate has affected the business. You do not necessarily need to have real figures from the business (they may not wish to give them to you), but you can make up some figures to illustrate the point. You will have to arrive at a conclusion about how seriously the business is affected by exchange rate movements. Are they affected to a great extent; to some extent; not very much; or not at all? You will also need to recognise that the extent of the effect will depend on how far the exchange rate has changed. If the exchange rate has moved only a little, the effect will not be great, but if it has changed a lot then the effect may be more serious. You will also need to say something about the nature of the effect whether it is positive or negative. If the business buys from abroad, a rise in the exchange rate may be good news because import costs will fall, but if it exports this means that trading partners will find that they have to give up more of their currency to buy the same goods, so it seems as if prices have increased. This may affect the amount the business sells, but the extent depends on how big the change in the exchange rate has been. It is sensible to choose a business that has some involvement in international trade in some way, otherwise the question becomes meaningless. There are plenty of small businesses that deal with customers or other countries abroad. Florists, for example, may be affected by changes in the exchange rate between sterling and the Euro because many cut flowers come from the Netherlands; manufacturers often rely on selling their products abroad but may also have to buy raw materials from overseas. As with other To what extent questions, you will have to arrive at a judgement that says whether the effect of the change in exchange rates has had a significant effect on your business (and how much); quite a large effect (and how much); some effect (and how much); or hardly any effect at all (and why).