Unit 13 Applied Business

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  1. Introduction

Occurrence happening at a determinable time and place, with or without the  of human . It may be a part of a  of occurrences as an effect of a preceding occurrence and as the cause of a succeeding occurrence.”

The description of an event is an occurrence that can happen just once, or more frequently. The event can be subjected to only invite guests, or can be open to the public to come freely. Events have a start and finishing time, and businesses can hold them to attract customers, or keep shareholders and their staff happy.

 

The choice of an event is a crucial decision as making the wrong choice could be detrimental in trying to earn money. In addition, if the choice is poor it can create a bad impression on a business to its shareholders, employees and customers. The event we will be running is: ‘The Meridian Christmas Fair’. The day will include a number of businesses offering their products to the public on a stall of a set size (6ft-2.5ft), charging £15 a stall and £25 for two. Anybody from the public is allowed entry to the event, at any time during the day (Sunday 12th December 2010). The event is to have a fun day picking out last minute Christmas presents and enjoy the seasonal atmosphere. We plan to create this seasonal atmosphere by having traditional characteristics like Santa’s Grotto, Christmas songs, decorations and many more effects to get people in the ‘Christmas spirit’. We will have a Santa impersonator who will provide the distinctive feature of children’s idea of Christmas and have the chance to take a photograph with him too. A raffle will also be taking place throughout the day, which we will also advertise before the event in order to raise money and give the customers a chance to win some of the donated gifts that the stallholders have donated.

We have decided to give all of the proceedings to ‘Great Ormond Street Hospital’ as we thought it was a great cause, which many people can relate to, and an organisation that many want to help.

The aim of the day is: -

‘To create an enjoyable festive event for the public, and raising money for 'Great Ormond Street Hospital'

We all chose different events to research and then nominated which one we thought would be most successful and appealing to the public, as well as being the most feasible. We used primary research to conduct our support on why we thought our idea would be good, and why it may not be. This gave us the means to choose the best event. We then created a questionnaire after choosing an event to find out what the public wanted for the day. By asking the public directly, means we were committed in making our event a success and wanted to give nothing less than they wanted.

We found that our Christmas Fair was most relevant to the season of December, which was a realistic time measure of when we could hold it. In addition as organisers we were enthusiastic which was motivation. We all wanted to set out in motivating the public to get in the Christmas spirit. It is also affordable and realistic for us to achieve, as we have limited funds available to us. Asking many businesses to take up their time to reserve a stall could seem expensive. However due to the large amount of advertisement and sponsorship that would be provided with holding a stall, businesses are able to use their profits and will therefore not cost anything for them to present. Also due to our proceeds going to a charity, it makes our local community seem more appealing to people, who want to get involved in helping. In addition parents and students of the school are a great support, which is a benefit when holding it at the school.

The reason for why we are holding this event is to raise money for ‘Great Ormond Street Hospital’. This is because we all agreed that we would be keen to make money for this charity. This charity raises money for the hospital to provide exceptional care for young patients and to discover new treatments and cures for their illnesses. Before deciding this charity, we looked on their website () to see exactly where our contribution would go, and how it would benefit the charity. They state that donations help fund the most up-to-date medical equipment, refurbish the hospital, support the research of developing break-through treatments and provide accommodation and support for children and their families. In addition when looking up this information, we found ‘Fundraising Guidelines’ that GOSH supplied for people running fundraising events. We read the guidelines and found them extremely helpful for running our first event. These guidelines can be found in Appendix -.

Other events that were being contemplated are listed below:

  • Formal Winter Ball
  • Halloween Fair
  • Car Boot Sale
  • A Cake Fair

However, these ideas were not taken further as it was believe they would not be as successful as holding a Christmas Fair. This is because; a Formal Winter Ball subjects to only couples, and would find people being uncomfortable if they had no date, this means our amount of attendees would be smaller which would not bring as much profit. Our Christmas fair is open to all of the public, an event that you can go to with family, friends or partners. There is no limit to amount of people helping our chances of greater profit. After discussing a Halloween event, we concluded it would not be as successful because not everybody celebrates Halloween in great detail, and usually only celebrate with kids, also narrowing our attendees. Furthermore, we agreed that we would not be able to organise ourselves in enough time, whereas we had more time to prepare to hold the Christmas Fair because of seasonal timings. Also a, ‘Cake Fair’ is too limited, and finding stallholders who would want to attend would be limited as there would be too much competition for them narrowing the chances of selling cakes. Finally we decided against a Car Boot Sale as not many of us were enthused by the idea, and felt a Christmas Fair would get people in a good mood before the celebrations begin. A copy of our research for these events and our Christmas Fair research can be found in Appendix 4.

We chose the ‘Christmas Fair’ to be our event as it can appeal to a large amount of people and therefore has a wider target demographic. By creating an event that appeals to a wide range of people will reduce the risk of not making a profit. This will help the success of an event, rather than a failed attempt. With more customers open to the event, means there is more potential for the event to be profitable. Also due to the Christmas season being celebrated by many, more people will be willing and interested to participate. The day will be full of excitement and entertainment for all members of the community to attend and enjoy them. It also seems relevant, as Christmas is an extremely popular annual holiday which dominates the end of November all the way through to December 25th. Being able to work in a team is essential in planning any event and also quite important to many businesses and therefore seems a skill that should be taken professionally. As the Christmas Fair was open to the public, it is even more important that the team work well together. Therefore it was the best event to stage in order to improve our skills. The event is also to raise money for ‘Great Ormond Street Hospital’, which suggests that more people are likely to attend and support our school to raise money for a great charity.  

The objectives that we created used SMART, in order to help the day become a success.

SPECIFIC

MEASURABLE

ACHIEVABLE

RELEVANT

TIMES

These are our objectives:

  1. Have over 100 attendees and supply great customer service.

The objective is to have over 100 attendees; this will allow us to see how well our advertising techniques were used. In addition it is imperative to have good customer service throughout the function. Without customer satisfaction, people are less likely to buy products or help to achieve our aim of producing an enjoyable festive event. Without customer satisfaction could also relate to a negative impression of our school, and making stallholders look bad too as they are associated with our event. This objective is more than achievable and sensible when creating an enjoyable day for families. The amount of profit and products being sold could also measure the rate of customer satisfaction. This is because, if people are not happy with the service they are getting less raffle tickets are likely to be sold, as well a the amount of people in the event.

  1.  Diverse Target Market

The objective is to have leaflets given to different schools, and areas of Royston by 2nd November. By appealing to a wide target market means that the day has more chance of being successful and making a maximum profit. If the day only appealed to a limited audience, less profit is likely to be made. The wide target market also helps to achieve the aim of making a profit. This is very achievable and sensible in order to create a profitable day, as the amount of people that will enjoy the day is not limited. By creating a day for all ages’ means it is appealing to the maximum amount of people possible and therefore not leaving anyone out voluntarily. It is achievable by aiming stall, activities and prizes to a wide range of ages, and personalities.

  1. A diverse amount of stalls

Another objective of ours is to have 15 stalls by 15th September. By offering diverse stalls means it more likely that people will buy more products. It also helps produce a day for families by targeting all ages within the stalls taking part. Offering a wide variety of stalls also means that more money is likely to be made and therefore increases the chance of making a profit overall. If there were not a wide variety of stalls, less products will be sold as there will be a limited target audience. This could be measured through the range of ages, as well and products and prizes on the day.

  1. Research

  • Primary

Primary research is the technique of collecting data yourself. It is the process of collecting completely new and original information. These techniques include questionnaires, interviews, and surveys. The form of primary research used to collect information concerning the Christmas Fair was a questionnaire. This included relevant questions aimed at all ages in order to make the day as successful as possible and make it as easy as possible to reach the aim of the event. A questionnaire is not a very time consuming method of primary research and also means a lot of different information is found from a variety of different people. A questionnaire allows people to create questions that fit the audience, in this case, families and allows you to ask relevant specific questions to fit the purpose. A questionnaire also means fairly reliable answers are received. We asked a large variety of people that live in our surrounding area. A large variety of people including young children, teenagers, adults and elderly people were asked in order to get a wide variety of results and to ensure that our aim can be reach with this type of event. This is because, if the event is aimed at families, it is important to create an event that will appeal to all ages. Also, a total of 100 people were questioned, as it is easier to summarise and accurately measure. This means better results will be found. A copy of the questionnaire and the results can be found in Appendix 1 & 2.

The results of the questionnaire show that we will benefit from including aspects such as having a raffle; refreshments and children’s stall such as painting as some of the activities and choices, in order to please the customers and meet the customer service objective created. The Santa’s Grotto and a chance to have a photo with Santa are also beneficial and would help raise more money for ‘Great Ormond Street Hospital’ as well as meeting the requirement of younger children and parents. The majority of the responses was positive and therefore shows that a Christmas Fair would be extremely beneficial to stage. This means there is no reason to dispute over any other events as them Christmas Fair has a high chance of being successful due to all of the positive feedback.

We also went to a surrounding areas annual Fate on the 19th June and asked stallholders if they would be interested in our Christmas Fair at the end of the year. We created a slip on Word Processor that they could fill out with their name, business name, number, e-mail address and nature of stall so that we would contact them in the near future. It also gave us an advantage to see what activities and layout that they had to use for our Christmas Fair. A copy of our information collected from Therfield Fate can be found in Appendix 4. 

  • Secondary

Secondary research is information conducted and found by someone else used as part of your market research. This could be any information you see useful or need to find out information of your own, for example a school website with information of their Christmas craft fairs. There are a number of benefits and drawback to using secondary research. It is a very cheap method of collecting data as no effort or money has to be spent on creating, conducting or analysing of the results and source.

As secondary research we looked at a variety of websites to find information about surrounding schools craft fairs such as dates and times. These websites included Greneway Middle School and Roysia Middle School. Other websites including craft related ones were used in order to find as many potential stallholders as possible. We also signed ourselves onto  so that stallholders could contact us regarding a space at our fair. In addition we were able to look at other events, where this research enabled us to find a suitable date to place our fair on in order to avoid having our event on the same day as any others as it may affect the profit made and the amount of customers which will attend.

A number of people also helped us with organising the event, including:

Tina. Filby

Tina Filby gave us advice around the pricing of certain aspects of the day. This includes the entry price, refreshment prices and how much to charge stallholders to reserve a table for their goods. She also gave us advice on which type of businesses to ask and that a variety of stalls are included in order to appeal to a wide range of potential attendees. She told us to include a range of stalls varying from, jewelry, clothes, cakes and many more in order to ensure that we meet the needs of our target audience. She also told us that we should include an entry fee; however not charge a huge amount in order to not turn people off when they arrive. Other information that was provided was to as well as charging the stallholders for money but to also ask for a donation for the raffle. She informed us that £15 was a satisfactory price for stallholders given the fact they are asked to donate a raffle prize as well. This will help us to save money on raffle prizes we would have otherwise purchased, and enabled us to create the perfect prices in order to maintain customer satisfaction as well as make a decent profit.  

Mrs. Taylor

Mrs. Taylor helped us to book the hall and also gave us discount on doing so as we are students of the school. She also helped us to find the perfect date to hold the event as she supplied us with information on our competitors and relevant open dates that we could use. She also explained to us why we got a discount off our final expense for the hall, as we are students, raising money for a charitable organisation. The full cost of the hall was £38 per hour, equating to £190 + VAT. However as we are students and running a charitable event we were given a discount and the total fee became £50 + 5% insurance. Mrs. Taylor explained that this public liability insurance protects us from any claims made by those that attended or were in the venue that were injured either due to carelessness or by pure chance.

A mix of both qualitative and quantitative data was obtained through secondary research. The qualitative data found through secondary research was obtained by speaking to Tina Filby. As she is a regular attendee of events of the same nature, she gave advice about stalls. After speaking to her it was obvious that a wide variety of stalls were needed. Tina Filby made it extremely clear that a wide variety of stalls are needed for a Christmas Fair event to be successful. Due to this, it is obvious that we need to contact a wide range of people and businesses in request that they reserve a stall. The quantitative data included the price of the hall, the amount of people that could fit within the hall at the same time, the prices charged at other similar events and prices for photos with Santa at the grotto. We found the price of the hall, after a discount from being students, would cost us £50 when it would have cost nearly £200. This was also made a lot cheaper as the money saved, means more money being given to our charity. After speaking to a teacher we found that the school hall could hold up to a rough figure of 300 people at one time, giving us more chance to have customers as a large sum of people can be in the hall at any given time.  We also looked at various websites that sold cups, plates, serviettes, and tablecloths for our refreshments table in order to make more money, and for the event to be enjoyable.

  1. Sources of Finance/Feasibility

Before staging any event, the feasibility of this event has to be explored. An event cannot take place is there are not a sufficient amount of organisational resources such as human, financial and physical. Data concerning the feasibility of the event is found through research. Through the use of both primary and secondary research it seems that the reasons for the event are worthwhile as our response back from the questionnaires were positive. Due to the majority of events costing money, it is essential that the source of finance that will be used be identified, as without money we cannot run the preparations of an event. As money is needed in preparation for our event it is essential that our source of finance be identified. Our beginning source of finance is a small loan from the business department in our school. This loan will be used to purchase a number of stamps in order to send out letters of request to different companies and potential stallholders. Once these letters are sent off and positive replies are returned, the source will come from the money given by each willing stallholder. Each stall will cost £15 to reserve and therefore, if, there is a fair amount of stallholders, we will make the event a large amount of money to use to purchase all necessary items and equipment to make the day successful.

A budget is created before an event is planned as a financial barrier that is agreed in advance. A budget is used to force people to plan ahead when preparing for the event and improve coordination. It also helps control spending and draws particular attention to waste and unnecessary things. It also makes the event planners act more responsibly when concerning money and purchases and helps to review the success of the event after it has taken place. A budget may also act as a restraint as lack of funding or inadequate amounts in different aspects in the set up of an event. For example, our budget is the money we receive from stallholders booking fee and the £30 loan we received from our schools business department. This means as long as we do not spend over our budget, we are likely to come out with a profit at the end of the day because we have not lost anything. It should not be hard to stay within the budget, as the raffle will cost little money due to donations of prizes, allowing us to not have to buy prizes. The donations from different businesses will be repaid by using their business name as sponsorship. The variable costs however are the amount of raffle tickets sold, refreshments bought and the amount of visits to he grotto as these all depend on the amount of people that decide to show up on the day, meaning there is no possible determination whether these will make a profit or not.

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A break-even chart was created in order to see just how successful the Christmas Fair would have to be in order to start making a profit once expenses were taken out. The stalls are the main source of income and therefore been put into the break-even chart. This means we are measuring how many stallholders would have to reserve stalls before we begin to make a profit. When charging £15 per stall, we only need to sell 9 stalls to break even taking all expenses into consideration. This break even can be found in Appendix -.

  1. Risk ...

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