Business studies Coursework - Study of a small established local business

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Business Studies Controlled Assignment

For my investigation of a small established local business, I decided to investigate RK News, which is a local business located on the busy new cross road. The reason why I have selected this business is because the location of the business has the capabilities of maintaining a stable flow of customers from the local community, the large amount of passers-by as well as students from the surrounding college and university.

From observing the store fascia which is located above the door, I found that the store sells various products such as tobacco, confectionery, alcohol, top-up cards, bus passes, ATM machine access, which from doing at other businesses I found that it was a service that none of the other nearby stores provided. The store also has a banner outside that says “cards for all occasions” which tells me that they have a wide range of cards available for purchase. For a small store, this is a wide range of products/services to provide and things such as ATM access and various cards in the store area unique selling point. This is one of the competitive advantages of this business and I think that if the improvable areas are put into major development, this business could be more profitable and earn more revenue.  The confectionery supplied to the store consists of various brands of products ranging from chocolates made by Nestle, Cadbury etc. which are produced via continuous flow production in the many factories that they have and then sent to suppliers which then sell these products to businesses like the RK News.

In order to find the specific areas in the business that had room for improvement, I first decided to find out from them what their target market was so that the features of this business could be geared toward making the store as appealing as possible to them. To fill in the different factors of this investigation, there were various things that I had to do.

I first had to find out who their chosen target market was, which I could find out by asking the store owner. The reason why I decided to ask the store owner what the target audience was is that because it was a small business, the owner is most likely a sole trader which means that he makes most of the decisions when it comes to the layout of the store and items to be sold. For him to decide these things he would want to take into the consideration the needs of his target audience to maximise sales. From asking the Owner of the business who his target audience was, this is what I asked him:

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 My Question:

Who is your target audience and, if at all, how have you modified your store profile to meet their specific needs?
Store Owner’s Answer
“Many students visit our store and also both passers-by and local people.  These people are our main source of income and the target audience also. I choose to sell items that I think they will most likely want to buy such as  confectionery and snacks and also selling products that nearby stores don’t sell  and having services that nearby competing stores don’t have such as oyster top-up and ATM machine access.”


From this Information, I can ...

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