BUSINESS STUDIES – ASSESSMENT TASK ONE 2013

(A) Outline the main features of each influence on business.

External includes those factors of which a business has little control over such as government policy, technology, economic conditions and social attitudes. Other main features of include financial, geographic, political, institutional, the markets and competitive situation.

Internal includes those factors over which the business has some degree of control over such as products, location, resources, management and business culture. Internal influence’s main features include management, hiring of competent and suitable staff, organization to keep the company up to pace, keeping records of documentation and security for the company’s assets.

If businesses can respond well to these influences, they can achieve profit.

(B) Explain the impact upon a business(es) and its operations.

McCain.

McCain is a privately owned company and like any other company, has a strong focus on the market. The company is the world’s largest producer for oven chips. Like all business, McCain also have a number of goals and things they want to achieve. Some of these include making profit for the owners, getting a big share of the total market, increasing sales and meeting the wants and expectations of consumers. To achieve these goals, a business needs to meet objectives such as having strong internal strength and being able to recognize what is happening externally and act fast to adapt to them.

McCain faces many external challenges socially, economically, politically, and technologically. One of the biggest factors that affected McCain was the growing concern for obesity, especially with children. This problem had a social, economic and political problem and showed in the slowdown of McCain sales as there were campaigns and social demands for healthier eating. Economic factors that affected McCain were changes in buying patterns. People’s incomes were increasing leading to the purchases of something better and quick. As people were rolling the money in, they had no time so preferred fast ready meals or simple and easy meals rather than a bag of McCain’s fish and chips where they would have to cook. Not only did this option suit the time frame, but was also better health wise. Technology was another external factor. To meet the demands of the public on healthier eating, McCain needed to create more capital to keep their products as healthy as possible. They needed technical solutions to problems such as turning their frozen products to heated products, freezing without harming the flavor and showing the natural parts of the product fully.

Although McCain faced many external factors, they fought back with solutions and responded to every one of the challenges. To answer the constant demands for healthier eating socially, McCain reduced the amount of salt and oil used with all their products. They also argued that their figures for fats are already low. McCain also made a change in ingredients and switched to more natural ingredients like specially picked potatoes and sunflower oil.