Long Term
The long-term aim of my business is to make a profit and to expand. It is also an aim to try to keep regular customers or even to attract people from outside of the village to shop there.
Objectives.
To achieve my business aims I am going to have do some certain things. My short-term aims were to break even and to just survive. To do this I am going to have make it known that I am starting up the shop. The people in Acol will find out about the shop through simple word of mouth but to make sure that everybody knows about it in the village I will advertise in the local newsletter that the village has. Once people have been told about the shop I will have to make it inviting for them. I could do this by making the inside of the shop village like. (e.g. not to modern).
My long-term business aims were to make a profit and to expand, as well as to try and get customers from outside of the village to shop there. To do this I will advertise in more wide spread newspapers, like the ‘Adscene’ or ‘Thanet Gazette’. Once people know about the shop then they will hopefully come to use it because they like the idea of a local shop or maybe even just because they were passing by. To keep regular customers I can perhaps open accounts for those who regularly use the shop and who live in the village. They could then perhaps pay off what they owe once every week or fortnight. This would involve a degree of trust so would only probably be used for those who use the shop a lot.
- Business Management
I have to decide what type of business my shop should be, should it be a sole trader or a partnership. There are advantages and disadvantages for each one that I have to consider before I can decide which one to be. Sole traders have the advantage of being easy to set up, allowing the shop to be set up quickly and to start getting customers in this is the same as a partnership which also has this advantage of being easy to set up. Sole traders are also easy to run because you do not have to get the permission of anyone else to change something, which is unlike a partnership because you have to get the permission of the other partner. There are also tax advantages to being a sole trader due to them being taxed in a different way to other businesses. National Insurance Contributions (NIC’s) are a tax on a worker’s earnings. If you are a sole trader then you can save yourself a lot of money by setting up as a business because you are able to keep all of the profits for your self, this is different to a partnership because in a partnership you have to share all of the profit with one or more other people. There us also the upside of not having privacy about your business, the only people that you have to tell is the Inland Revenue and Customs and Excise.
On the other hand there are disadvantages to being a sole trader that a partnership does not have. For, instance in a partnership it may be easier to raise capital to start the business off. This can be different with a partnership because the money cane be raised by more people and sometimes there a people called sleeping partners who just supply the partnership with initial money and then don’t do any work. In a sole proprietorship you also have to work long hours to keep the business afloat, where as in a partnership there are several people to spread the workload across and this will decrease the amount of stress and work for each person. The problem of lack of continuity and illness are also a big factor in sole proprietorships with the sole trader becoming ill or dying therefore not allowing the business to continue to run. You are less likely to come across this in a partnership because if one of the partners becomes ill then there are always others to make sure that the business continues to function.
Now that I have looked at all of the arguments that I can look at to try and make up my mind as to whether I am going to be a sole trader or become a partnership, I have decided to be a sole trader.
There are a number of different things that influence my business and how it should operate. One of these things is competitors and how I will compete with them. In my situation there are no actual competitors that I have to contend with due to there being no other shop in Acol, but there are competitors that are situated in Birchington and Minster. In these two places there are quite big shops that offer a wide range of goods for the consumer making them quite a good place to go if you have any small shopping needs. Although this may produce a slight problem, I don not think that it will be a particularly big one, because my assumption is that people would prefer to go to a small local shop for their basic supplies, than to go to all the way into a another town to do the same thing.
Due to the position of the shop I will also have to consider my pricing because prices often vary according to the area that you are in. For instance, if you were in a garage just outside of Ramsgate and you were to buy a chocolate bar and were to buy one later that day in a service station on the motor way then you would expect to pay more. This is due to the service station being the only place in the area at which you could buy a chocolate bar meaning that they can put the prices slightly up if they wish to.
- Research Objectives and Methodology
I have several sources of research that I have used to find out the information that I need to use in my project. The source of information that I used to get my field research is a questionnaire that I sent out to twenty people. Below is a blank copy:
Questionnaire
- What part of Acol do you live in? (tick box)
Side nearest Minster
Side nearest Birchington
Centre
- How old are you? (please circle)
20-24 40-44 60-64
25-29 45-49 65-69
30-34 50-54 70+
35-39 55-59
- How many children do you have (please circle)
0 3
1 4
- 5+
- Would you use a shop if there were one in Acol? (tick box)
Yes
No
- What would you like the shop to sell?
........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
- How often would you visit the shop? (please tick box)
Once a week Five times week
Twice a week Six times a week
Three times a week Everyday
Four times a week More than once a day
- Would you actually benefit from there being a shop in Acol? (please circle)
Yes
No
- How much would you roughly spend in the shop a week if it were to be there? (please circle)
£0 £41-50
£1-10 £51+
£11-20
£21-30
£31-40
- Where would you say that the shop would be best situated?(tick box)
In the centre of Acol
In the side nearest Minster
In the side nearest Birchington
Not really bothered
Thank you for filling out my questionnaire. I will now process the information so that I can change it into useable data and represent it in the form of pie charts and graphs.
I have also used the internet for some of my information. A lot of the sites that I used were sites from fairly large sized national superstores for their prices. Some of these were:
– a large national superstore.
– a smaller store that still operates nationally but is more of a local convenience store. (Franchise)
– another large national superstore.
– also a large national superstore.
My GCSE textbook (GCSE Business Studies by Alain Anderton) is another source of information for me. In this book there is information about almost everything that I need to know for my project and I have and still will be using a lot of information from it. Some of the information that I used is on what type of business I should set up. The book helped me with this situation because it told me about all of the advantages and disadvantages of each. Sole Proprietorships Pg 34-37. Partnerships Pg 38-41. Franchises Pg 50-53.
I also managed to find out different ways in which I might be able to market my goods and business. This information consisted of the four P’s (product, promotion, place and price). Product Pg 130-133. Promotion Pg 142-145. Place Pg 146-149. Price Pg 136-139.
- Results
Below are the results of my survey in the form of a spreadsheet.
I will now represent my results as pie chats:
There are different types of machinery that I will need in order for my business to work. These things are bits like tills for use in transaction on site and an alarm to protect the actual shop from theft.
I have looked at some possible products that I might be interested in using:
Tills
Sharp XE A101
£110 + p/p + vat
The XE-A101 cash register is perfect for a small business, vendor or concession stands. It features a large display, 80 price look ups (PLU's)
Casio TE-100
£350 + VAT
P/P £9.80 + VAT
-10 Clerks
-Alpha display.
-24 departments
-Thermal printer
-1200 Plu’s
-4 Tax tables
-External printer optionl
-PC connection.
TEC MA-516
General store/shop
Departments: 20 departments.
PLUs:600 PLUs
Printer: heavy-duty, 2-station, numeric, prints journal and receipts, validation, logo stamp, individual paper release levers, receipt on/off, after-sale receipt, 44 mm paper width
Drawer: full-size heavy-duty steel base and drawer with lock, 5-bill, 5-coin removable tray, removable coin insert, media slot, manual release via lock
Security/Control: 8 clerks (code entry)
7-position mode lock, received-on-account, paid out
Information: management reports including PLU, department, clerk, hourly sales, media in drawer, periodic cashier, comprehensive financial (daily & periodic)
Utility : 4 currency conversion, multi-color swivel-pole customer display
Convenience: 6 payment media keys (cash, check, charge, coupon, food stamps, misc.), void, discount, vendor coupon, store coupon, food stamps, automatic tax calculation with 2 programmable tax rates, programmable keyboard layout, 10-digit multi-color operator display, stylish cabinet design
Stock
I have also looked at different things that I may use for my stock, so that I might be able to see how much I should sell my products for.
Bread
Hovis best of both, 65p
Hovis extra thick white, 58p
Tesco standard brown bread, 39p
Tesco wholemeal thick sliced loaf, 42p
Milk
Semi-skimmed milk, 2 pints, 56p
Semi-skimmed milk, 1 pint, 37p
- Analysis of Results
From my results I can see that the people who live in Acol are evenly spread around, therefore making it harder to decide where to place the shop. If a large majority of the people were to be situated in one place then I would have been more likely to place the shop there, due to there being more people to use the shop.
I can also see that the largest amount of people are over the ages of 30. This probably means that there are a lot of people at work during the day and would not use the shop during that time. However, there a number of people over the age of sixty who would probably be at home during the day and may want to use the shop. I have to take these ages into consideration when I decide what times my shop would be open. I have to decide whether it would be worth having my shop open all day or to have it open in the morning and evening.
I can also see that most households have one to three children, and this means that I should seriously consider selling sweets because I feel that this would bring in a high percentage of my future income.
Everyone who was surveyed also said that they would use a new shop in Acol, so this means that my shop would get used, it is just a question of how often people would use it and how much they would send at a time.
That was the purpose of my next question was to find this information out. I asked how often people would use they would use the shop and I received a varying set of results, from people who said that they would use the shop once a week to people who said that they would use the shop daily.
The answer that had the most people choosing it was that they would use the shop three times week. The entirety of the surveyed group also said that the shop would be beneficial to Acol and there fore they would not have any objections to it being opened. If they had had any objections to the shop being opened then they may have complained to the council, trying to prevent it.
The largest majority of people who said they will use the shop said that they would spend roughly £20-£30 a week. If I take this as a n average then I an see that there will be enough money made to keep the business afloat.
