BTEC First Certificate in Business
Unit 1 Exploring Business Purposes
Assessor:
Assignment Title:
Issue Date:
Exploring Business Purposes
Thursday 30th September 2008
Task
Submission Date
Grading
Task 1
Task 2
Task 3
Task 4
Task 5
Task 6
Task 7 (a and b)
Task 7c
Task 8
Task 9
Task 10
Task 11
Friday 8th October
Friday 8th October
Friday 15th October
Friday 5th November
Friday 12th November
Friday 26th November
Friday 10th December
Friday 14th January
Friday 28th January
Friday 11th February
Thursday 17th February
Thursday 17th February
Unit 1 P1
Unit 1 P1
Unit 1 P1 & 2
Unit 1 M1
Unit 1 P3
Unit 1 M1
Unit 2 P1 & 2
Unit 2 M1
Unit 2 P4 & 5
Unit 2 M2
Unit 2 D1
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P /M /D
Student
Sign
Teacher
Sign
Bibliography
Failure to meet the above submission dates may affect your grade.
Please note that all your work must be word processed using ICT
You will gain extra marks for good spelling and good presentation
Assignment Scenario:
You have been asked by the Young Chamber to prepare a series of documents for use
during enterprise activities which will help them learn more about the purpose,
structure and functions of businesses. You need to use images, diagrams to help
present your work.
Business and Ownership (Tasks 1-4)
Task 1
Produce a title page for your assignment which includes the following information:
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Unit 1
Exploring Business Purposes
Your full name (first and surname)
One or two pictures of any of the businesses you talk about in your assignments
Unit 1 – Exploring Business Purposes
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Task 2
Write a paragraph for each, to explain the following different types of business
ownership: 1. Sole trader
5. Franchises
2. Partnership
6. Charity
3. Private Limited Company (Ltd)
4. Public Limited Company (PLC)
Task 3 (Unit 1 P1& P2)
You now need to choose 4 different organisations and describe them in more detail.
Choose FOUR from the following: 1. A local business - a sole trader or a partnership. It is likely to be a small business.
You should find this yourself. It could be a business in your family or a business local to
where you live or your college.
2. A Ltd e.g. Cameron Balloons or Numatics International
3. A PLC e.g. Sainsbury's / Tesco or Virgin Group
4. A charity e.g. Oxfam or The Eden Project
5. A franchise e.g. McDonalds or KFC
Describe each, in detail, making sure you cover the following: Purpose
What the business does and its main purpose
Does it supply goods or services or both?
Does it aim to make a profit or is its purpose to provide a public service?
Does it provide goods/services at below cost so that ordinary people can afford them?
Ownership
Who owns the business (don't repeat task 1 here - just mention that you know what
kind of ownership it has)
Size
The size of the business: Click here for links to help on find this information
How many employees does the business have?
How many branches or outlets does the business have?
Is it classed as a small, medium or large business? (Click here for a definition)
If possible, try to find out some information on the businesses finances e.g. profits or
sales figures.
Scale
The scale of the business
Is it a local, regional, national, European or global business?
Unit 1 – Exploring Business Purposes
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Task 4 (Unit 1 M1)
Choose two of the businesses you have written about and fully explain what aspects of
the ownership are similar and what aspects are different. You could then summarise
this in a table.
The two businesses you choose should be very different from each other, for example
a national or multinational retail outlet compared to a local privately-owned outlet. This
will help you get a better mark for your work as you will have more to write about.
Differences & Similarities between Business 1 & Business 2
Similarities:
Product/service provided
Purpose
Size
Ownership
Scale
Location
Differences:
Product/service provided
Purpose
Size
Ownership
Scale
Location
Unit 1 – Exploring Business Purposes
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Business Activities (Tasks 5 & 6)
The Young Chamber have now asked you to write an article for a Business Education
magazine which would help students understand how businesses are classified by the
activities which they conduct as part of their day-to-day operations and also how the
various sectors have grown and declined over time.
Task 5 (Unit 1 P3)
Start your article by in detail explaining what is meant by primary, secondary and
tertiary sectors with at least two examples of businesses in these sectors.
Then use the table below to describe each sector in more detail giving clear local,
regional and national examples.
Local
Regional
National
Primary sector:
Examples
How does example
qualify?
Secondary sector:
Examples
How does example
qualify?
Tertiary sector:
Examples
How does example
qualify?
Chose one of your examples from each of the above 3 sectors and give more detail
about the business.
Task 6 (Unit 1 M2)
In the rest of your article you must:
 Explain that the size of the different sectors changes through time as they may
grow or decline. Include your graphs on employment trends in the 3 sectors.
 Explain the various areas of growth or decline in all three sections of business
activity.
 Give reasons for these changes in the size of the sectors.
Unit 1 – Exploring Business Purposes
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Business Aims and Objectives (Task 7)
To help the students understand why businesses exist and how the aims & objectives vary
between sectors, in your role as Business Advisor to the Young Chamber, you are expected to
prepare a PowerPoint presentation which will be used in school as part of the induction process
into the Young Chamber.
Task 7a (Unit 2 P1)
Start by defining what “Aims” and “Objectives” are and clearly show the difference
between the two.
Task 7b (Unit 2 P2 & 3)
Using Thorpe Park and one other business you researched in Task 2, produce a
presentation which must include:
 A description of the difference between aims and objectives.
 An explanation of what SMART objectives are.
 Describe why businesses set aims & objectives and how they help
businesses to achieve their purpose (e.g. survival, break-even, growth,
service provision). You need to give some examples of businesses aims and
objectives (e.g. Thorpe Park & a couple of other businesses.)
 An explanation of how aims and objectives differ between different
sectors and types of businesses (e.g. public, private, not-for-profit). Again
giving at least two examples from each different business to support your
observations.
 Explain the aims and objectives for both businesses you are researching.
Task 7c (Unit 2 M1)
Using the same two businesses as above, compare and contrast their aims and
objectives. Discuss the similarities and differences between the aims and objectives.
Functional Areas of Business (Tasks 8 -10)
Following requests from other Young Chamber schools, the Young Chamber Executive have
asked you to write a report which explores the main functional areas of business
organisations. This report will need to be detailed and illustrated by giving real life examples.
Task 8 (Unit 2 P4 & P5)
The purposes of functional areas
1. Describe the functional areas and their main purposes within business
organisations.
Unit 1 – Exploring Business Purposes
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2. For Thorpe Park, describe the main activities and responsibilities of FOUR of the
following functional areas:
a. Administration
b. Customer Service
c. Production
d. Human Resources
e. Finance
f. Sales
g. Marketing
h. Research and Development
3. Explain the role that each functional area plays in supporting the aims and
objectives of the business.
Task 9 (Unit 2 M2)
The interaction of functional areas
For Thorpe Park and one other business described:
1. Draw an organisational structure which shows the various functional areas used
to support its day-to-day operations.
2. Explain how the various departments of each organisation interact and how they
inter-relate to support each other.
Task 10 (Unit 2 D1)
For each of the two businesses explored in Task 9, you are required to evaluate the
extent to which the functional areas contribute to the aims & objectives of the
business.
1. Identify the aims and objectives for both businesses.
2. Using the table below show how each department contributes to particular aims
and objectives of each business.
Business Name:
Department
Business Name:
Department
How it contributes to the aims &
objectives
How it fails to contribute to the
aims & objectives
How it contributes to the aims &
objectives
How it fails to contribute to the
aims & objectives
Unit 1 – Exploring Business Purposes
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3. Summarise your view as to which of the two businesses departments work most
effectively together to meet the businesses aims and objectives.
Task 11
On a new page:
 Put a title Bibliography
 List all the sources of information that you have used for each task (include any
speakers, websites, books and class notes)
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