1. Year 10 Business Unit 1: Introduction to Small Business
Monday 16th September
Mr Nicholls

2. Objective
To be able to state why customer needs are central to a business.

3. To start with… We’re going to be doing a little test.
You’ll need a piece of paper and a pen – but no taking notes!

4. Today…
We need to carry on from the work we were doing last lesson where we were considering what a business is and what their aims might be.
Today we’re going to be considering customer needs and how a business will identify them.

5. Important…
NO Business can guarantee success in their field as quite simply – there are too many variables that could shift their likeliness of success.
In order to best prepare themselves to be as successful as possible, a business will need to consider exactly what their customers will want.
This is known as MARKET ORIENTATION.

6. Types of purchase…
Stereotypically there are 4 different types of purchase that people will go for:
Routine Purchases – everyday purchases that require little or no thought.
Limited Decision Purchases – less routine purchases that involve a little more thought.
Extensive Decisions – purchases which require a lot of thought.
Impulse Purchases – purchases that are made on the spur of the moment.
What sorts of products will fall into each of the purchasing categories do you think?

7. Market Research
Market Research is where businesses will find out what customers will want through researching their market.
It’s generally used to find out answers to questions such as:
Who is in the target market?
Where are they located?
What do they want?
What are our competitors doing?
How could we do things better?
The research can be done in two different ways:
Primary Research
Secondary Research

8. Secondary Research
Simply put – Secondary Research is information that has already been collected so already exists.
There are several places a business could go to for this sort of research –
Government Statistics
Market Research Companies.
Newspapers.
The Internet.
Company’s Past Data.

9. Advantages and Disadvantages

10. Primary Research
Simply – this is research that collects information that is new – so does not exist.
There are several methods that a business could choose to go for (or ask a company to go for):
Test Marketing
Surveys
Questionnaires
Observations
Consumer Panels
Interviews

11. Typical layout…
Normally the company will need to make sure they follow a specific layout for their questioning, so will work something along the lines of:
What are the characteristics (age/sex etc) of the person answering the question?
What do people know about the product or service?
How often do people use or buy the product or service?
What people think or feel needs improving about the product or service.

12. Rules…

13. Also…
The business conducting the research will need to carefully consider how they are going to record the answers from the people:
Open Questions – allowing people to give whatever answer they wish – otherwise known as Qualitative Data.
Closed Questions – requiring a yes or no answer or a choice of answers to select normally collated numerically – otherwise known as Quantitative Data.
Scales – a good way of measuring attitudes of people – again, Qualitative Data.

14. Advantages and Disadvantages…

15. And finally…
Homework needs to be handed in please!