Ao1 : aims and objectives

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AO1 : Aims and Objectives

Tesco was founded in 1919 by a man named Jack Cohen in East London. The first ever Tesco brand begun appearing in 1924, ever since the Tesco business industry has rocketed and is now found in towns across the country. Tesco sells many varieties of products and services, which include:

  • Food; frozen, canned and groceries.
  • Electrical equipment
  • Pharmacies
  • Entertainment
  • Tesco personal finance
  • Instant travel insurance
  • Life insurance
  • Home insurance
  • Instant breakdown cover
  • Online DVD/video rental
  • Home delivering
  • Telecom
  • Tesco.com
  • Also, home furniture and equipment

All of the above and more benefit Tesco business and this has been proven through the demand of its stores nationwide. Tesco’s customers are all people and communities who purchase their products or services. They now have five different ranges of their company all suitable and provide products designed for specific reasons. These five varieties are:

  • Tesco
  • Tesco Extra
  • Tesco Metro
  • Tesco Express
  • One Stop

Tesco’s provide more of a larger scale of groceries and food than non-food goods. This is the general superstore, which families and people may go to for large stocks of food goods. This is why they have larger trolleys and larger car parks.

Tesco Extra are opposite to what the general Tesco offers and provides, they sell a larger scale of non-food goods, such as electrical equipment, health care etc.

Tesco Metro stores are smaller than Extra stores as they can be found on high streets and in city centres. They provide products such as on-the-go sandwiches, drinks, and a mini café beneficial to busy shoppers.

Tesco Express are like newsagent shops, which are convenient to neighbourhoods, they sell limited amount of products such as milk, bread, eggs and other products, which people use daily.

The smallest of all Tesco’s are One Stop; they are very small shops, which can be found near town centres and residential areas. The Tesco brand is “everyone, everything, everywhere and anytime”. I believe this means that they have everything to meet everyone’s needs and are available to everyone at anytime anywhere, implying most places. This is what makes their business so popular because their products and services are aimed to be beneficial to everybody.

Tesco falls into the tertiary sector of a business as it provides us with a service. Tertiary includes service industries (Tesco), leisure (e.g. David Llyod Leisure), transport (Cabs), finance (Tesco finance), distribution, retailing, wholesaling, and communications. Businesses, which categorize into the tertiary sector, are usually larger companies or businesses with many suppliers.

Other sectors include; primary; secondary and quaternary sector. The primary sector is the companies and firms, which extract raw materials from the earth. This includes mining, quarrying, fishing, agriculture, and forestry. An example of this may be jewellery specialists whom may have extracted their own pearls and gold.

The secondary sector is the processing of raw material into finished or semi-finished manufacturing. These businesses help with the making process of products.

Also, quaternary sector is hi-tech industries, which includes health, training and education, all of which are government funded.

Businesses of all sectors have aims and objectives in order for them to be successful. An aim is a general statement about what a business intends to do or achieve. Examples of aims may include:

  • To make profit
  • To survive
  • Provide competitive service
  • To be environmentally friendly
  • To be charitable, voluntary or be community involved
  • To maximise sales

All of the above are general aims, which most businesses wish to achieve. The most important thing for a new business may be is survival. This is because if they are incapable of surviving and sales decrease, profits decrease and they may become bankrupt and be forced to shut down.

It is important for a business to make profit to earn money and achieve. It is also important for them to provide a competitive service to achieve maximised profits and compete against other businesses that sell similar products by winning over customers.

They would also want to be environmentally friendly not to upset stakeholders such as pressure groups, which can result to protests. It is important they offer a charitable, voluntary or community service for non-profitable reasons such as helping the needy.

Most of all, it is important for a business to maximise sales or the quality of their products or services to gain more customers therefore earn more profit.

Tesco’s most important aims are to remain with a good reputation and customer views. This is important because if customer and consumers find that the business has given them bas quality of a product of service they will recommend not to go to the Tesco business. This is also known as word of mouth. However, if the word of mouth, which is given, is good, Tesco’s are to benefit from more customers therefore gain more profit.

The aims that Tesco’s has set for them have been proven to be successful and include:

  • Providing goods and services to the local community successful.
  • To be environmentally friendly.
  • Providing a competitive service
  • Surviving and expanding the business.
  • Providing charitable or voluntary services.
  • Making a profit
  • Maximising sales and improving the quality of their products and services

Tesco’s has met all of the above aims. In terms of providing goods and services to the local community this is successful as they have a Tesco store in almost every town therefore buying Tesco’s products is no long optional but now beneficial and well known to all customers nationwide.

Also, being environmentally friendly has been met by Tesco’s as in every Tesco Extra car park recycling bins have been provided so when customers are visiting the store they may recycle goods such as, paper, green glass etc.

Tesco’s are also successful for providing a competitive service as they compete with other stores such as Sainsbury’s, Morissions, Asda, Waitrose, and newsagents in terms of prices and quality of their products.

Tesco’s have survived and expanded their business as no stores have shut down in bad circumstances, however more have opened up.

Tesco’s are advantageous to environmentalists and pressure groups as they provide charitable and voluntary services with recycling bins, Tesco vouchers for school computers. They also organise events such as the women’s breast cancer research appeal run and fund for local school’s sport’s days.

Tesco’s have met their aim to maximise sales and improving the quality of their products and services as they give out surveys and questionnaires to customers to see where their weaknesses are and how they can improve. They recently had met their quality aim as they introduced ranges of Tesco brand; one including Tesco Finest. For the Tesco Finest products they are a much higher quality than Tesco Value, however, come at a higher price. This has also been proven as they quote “lowering prices every week”, which shows Tesco are aware of the general price for products in their market and haven improved to suit customers’ needs.

An objective is a precise and measurable goal of a business. This includes the goals that a business wants to achieve. In order for a business to meet its objectives they may set a target. Objectives can be used to judge whether a business has met its aims. General business objectives include:

  • Selling more than competitors
  • Producing new goods and services
  • Providing more services
  • Improving a product
  • Reducing costs

An example of an objective is to increase sales by 12% over the next year. This is because it is specific, measurable, and achievable and time bound. (SMART).

Objectives need to be SMART in order to achieve them. They need to be:

  • Specific; to know directly what exactly what you wish to achieve
  • Measurable; to see your progress of achieving your goals
  • Achievable; to be achievable and realistic to ensure you are able to achieve it.
  • Relevant; needs to be involved with and affecting your business otherwise it would be pointless.
  • Time bound; to measure over a certain period of time and a limit to when your goals need to be achieved.

Tesco’s objectives may include:

  • To increase sales by 17% in Tesco Extra store over the next six months.

  • To attract older generation customers over the next two years.

  • To globalise themselves and to makes themselves available to most towns across the globe over the next ten years

Tesco also state that they aim to maximise the benefits they being and minimise negative impacts. They aim to take responsibility to these impacts, to measure and tackle their effects, to work with stakeholders on issues and ensure that CR permeates on all parts of the business.

The aims and objectives are important to all businesses including Tesco as they can predict their outcome of the business over the coming years. It is important to the business as it gives a clear idea of what they have achieved and what they can do to ensure they are successful. Knowing their overall progress motivates and encourages them to do better and improve qualities and services of their business.

A business may want to change its aims if they have achieved it or may not be able to achieve it. They can change their aims again based upon “SMART”. This could possibly be the time bound was not a long enough period or irrelevant to their business.

The difference between the two aims and objectives is an aim is a general statement about what they intend to do where as an objective is precise and measurable and includes what they may need to do in order to achieve it.

Tesco believe their main purpose of their business aims is to create value for customers to earn their lifetime loyalty. In order for Tesco’s to achieve their aims and objectives they adapted their business. They adapted by location of each store, all of their business locations are near to a supply of workers, customers, and transport links.

If Tesco were to be ever more successful and could improve the quality of their business and their aims and objectives they could consider:

  • Sending loyal regular customers home surveys of what their weaknesses may be so they are able to tackle this over a certain time period
  • Carry out on-the-spot interviews asking customers why they choose to visit Tesco and for which products in particular whether it is for their prices or quality of the products.

What makes Tesco so popular is they believe their customer service is important and also state “cooperate responsibility is not an additional burden or a distraction from serving our customers; it is an essential part of sustaining ourselves as a responsible company”.

However, if they were to adapt and improve their aims and objectives they should aim to communicate more with the local community and become more involved with local activities such as sporting events and sponsor schools for after school activities that may encourage their parents to shop at Tesco more often.

As my sole trader I chose to investigate a local newsagent/grocers. They offer products and services, which include:

  • Newspapers
  • Cold drinks
  • Milk, yoghurt, cheese, bread (main food group foods)
  • Sweets
  • Vegetables
  • Frozen foods
  • Cigarettes
  • Tissue, stationary etc.
  • Alcoholic beverages
  • Lottery

My sole trader (Cranford Supermarket) is located in the centre of Cranford and by other shops including a liquor store, laundrette, hairdressers, two fast food shops, an estate agent, dental clinic, wine bar and vehicle rental shop. This is advantageous as they are attraction potential passing by people from other shops. The shop has been advertised with a huge displayed sign above the main entrance and some vegetables are on display outside the shop.

The business is similar to Tesco in terms of what products they offer to the public. The reason why this newsagent may not be as profitable as Tesco is because Tesco offers a wider range of products than the newsagent. The newsagent is a family-ran business, which does not employ any workers as all the work is done by them, which makes working hours flexible.

The aims of this newsagent may be to survive, as they are a small convenience store and there is a lot of competition. People choose to go to Tesco rather than the newsagent because they have a lot of products and services all in one place. However, they chose to go to the newsagent for few products for example milk in the morning and the person is rushing. This is because queues are shorter and it is more convenient for them. Other aims of my newsagent may include possibly expanding their shop or even introducing new products to the shop such as a new newspaper or more magazines.  Now that Tesco has launched smaller stores such as Tesco Express newsagent have more competition, which makes survival one of their most important aims.

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The objectives of the newsagent may be to survive over the next year and to increase sales by adapting their location and the varieties of products and services they offer to their community. They may even have objectives to improve their services in terms of the way they treat and greet customers, as majority of them must be local and regular.

In order for the newsagent to become even more successful or just remain having a constant amount of customers their aims and objectives need to be met on time and are achieved they ...

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