Unit 1- Business environment

Describe the type of business, purpose and ownership of two contrasting businesses.

In this article I will be talking about two different organisations and describe what type of business the businesses are. I will also be explaining the businesses mission statement and their purpose. Finally I will be talking about who owns these businesses. The two organisations that I will be talking about are Marks and Spencer and OXFAM.

Size

Not every business is the same size. They can be small, medium or a large sized business. A small business is normally local and have a range between 10 and 50 employees. Every business also has a different amount of turnover. A businesses turnover is the amount of money that the business makes a year before tax has been taken off. A small business usually makes a turnover of under £6.5 million. A medium sized business normally have a range between 50-250 employees and have a turnover around £12.9 million. Finally a large business normally has more than 500 employees to around 1,500 and have a turnover over £12.9 million.

Scale

The scale of a business links with the size of the organisation. A local scale business is normally small and only has one store or location. One example of this would be the local newsagents. This store is usually locally owned. As the business is small it means that they would have a range of around 50 employees and a turnover of less than £6.5 million as stated above. A local business is set up and operates in the local area and community and is owned by a sole trader. A national scaled business is a business that you can find in a location or an office that is in the major cities of a country. An example of this would be FEDEX. This means that there is more than one store. A national business is a company that started in one area and have expanded to other parts of that area. A national business is owned by a partnership. An international business, global and multinational business is based as a large business and means that there are lots of stores for that business. This could be all over the world, in two or more regions and countries. Examples of these would be Apple and Tesco. A global business is a business that operates around the world (apple) however an international business has these operations but it is not widespread. These are owned by a franchise, sole trader, partnership or a PLC.

Sector

There are three different sectors when thinking about businesses. These are primary, secondary and tertiary. A primary sector is about extracting products of nature. This could be thing such as mining and forestry. It is also about getting raw materials. There are different things that go on in this sector. These are farming, fishing, hunting and mining. One example that is in this sector is BP shell. This is because they mine for gas to use in petrol stations.

The secondary sector is about converting the raw materials into a finished good/ partially finished. The processes that are involved in this sector is manufacturing, construction, building, energy, textiles and chemical engineering. Some example of companies that are in the secondary business are Volkswagen, dyson and David Wilson.

The tertiary sector is about providing services to individuals and businesses. Some of the processes in this sector includes selling the product, advertising, transporting, storing the product, customer service, retail, teaching, insurance and media. Some companies that are in this sector is cinemas, schools, NHS, ASDA, Tesco, retail and banks.

Public, private and voluntary sectors

There are three different ownership types such as public, private and voluntary. A public business is a company that has been set up and been taken over by the government. They give a service to their consumers which would be the community and they allow these services to anybody. Some examples of this would be libraries, schools and the Leicester