Investigation of a local business
Sole Trader: Tourist shop
Partnership: Spanish restaurant
Franchise: Mc Donald’s
Introduction
Normally when a business starts the business is small. This is because the person who starts it hasn’t got a lot of finance. A person who starts alone in the business world is called a sole trader. If there are two or more persons involved, e.g. family or friends, then it is called a partnership. These two types of businesses are unlimited liability, because it’s not the business that is liable but the owner. This means that, if the business goes bankrupt, the owner’s personal assets can be taken away.
Methods of research
An investigation was done on a partnership and a sole trader, which are the most common type of businesses around in southern Spain. The investigation was to find out how these owners run and manage the business. Points were taken of how big the company was by the number of employees working. The way the owner brought in the customers in to the business and made them use/buy the service and what kind of a service the owner would give the customer. Then also made some interesting annotations of some key points which only that type of business would use and how the owner went along with it.
Sole trader
The sole trader investigated was a souvenir shop on the coast near the sea side. This shop was a total of 100m2, and sells all type of goods which the customers can take back to their own country for a remembrance. The market of these type of shops was only for tourists, in southern Spain most of the tourists are here in summer vacation, so the owner had to get all his profits in that specific time of year. On that beach line there were about twenty other shops, so competition is big. So each of the shops has to attract the customer eyes, if they don’t the business won’t work. Each shop had a different way of attracting the customer’s attention. Some did this by hanging big signs saying discounts; other shop put the quality goods outside so when the customer walks past it would bring it attention. If the owner of the specific shop saw a tourist looking at a good of his he would directly help them out and be as nice as he could.