Assess whether a tuck shop is likely to be a successful business if it were to set up in the school.

Tushyam Sonecha Business Studies Coursework 10B

Introduction

The aim of my investigation is to assess whether a tuck shop is likely to be a successful business if it were to set up in the school. The businesses objective is to sell confectionary items such as sweets, chocolates and drink. The brand and type of confectionary will be decided based upon the questionnaire and my other research. As my questionnaire suggests, it is common knowledge that the canteens prices are over priced and their quality and services is poor. With my prices being competitively priced, the canteen will be in high competition.

Furthermore, I think that as there is only one business in the Watford Grammar school market, it will be easy for me to compete.

Success Criteria

As the objective of my investigation is to measure the success of the business in the school, I will then need to select success criteria. The criteria I chose must be able to use on predictions made with the market research, therefore, customer satisfaction is automatically ruled out. The reason for this is that I cannot be measured until the business is established.

One method I could use is return on capital employed (ROCE). But, the result give can be inaccurate on the success of the business. This is because if the capital used is very low, the amount of return you will receive will be high even though there is a low amount of profit.

Like before, using the profit margin can also be misleading as by giving a percentage of the revenue as the profit does not directly give you an amount. For this I will then use the amount of profit made to be my success criteria. It will be easy, as you simply need to look at the profit margin. However other success criteria can apply to the business being profitable.

Method

I began my research in order to start my business and I carried out a questionnaire, which was primary market research from which I got the data directly and allowed me to see which questions needed changing or adding.

In my final questionnaire (Appendix2), I introduced into my questionnaire quantitive research so that I could use it in my calculations, vu also the qualitative research by which I would get the consumer opinion.

When I compared the questions from both the questionnaires I found that the first one mainly concentrated on qualitative research and did not get much information that would help me with my calculations, so I added more quantitive research i.e. I asked what is the normal expenditure per a visit and how often do you visit the tuck shop. I also changed the wording of question 1 asking how many times you visit the canteen to how many times do you buy sweets and drinks a week. At the beginning of the actual questionnaire I put an opening paragraph making the person aware of what I would like them to do and what the questionnaire is about.

I think that the market for another tuck shop would be approximately 900 students as I sell certain product that the canteen don’t and also sue to my competitive prices. I asked ten people to answer my questionnaire and to broaden my answer to the whole market in the school I would just have to multiply it by 90. The reason I estimated 900 people rather then 1200 was that I did not include any of the 6th formers and the reason for this is that they have a higher accessibility to other providers of my products.

Results (In ...