Edexcel GCSE Business Studies Unit 1 & 3 2016

The Boston Matrix is a product portfolio tool used to plan the development of products. It can be used to see where a businesses products are in the market and can help them to determine what to do with it (e.g increase advertising or add another product to the market etc). The market growth is the demand for a particular product or service so a typewriter for example would have a low market growth and nobody needs them and a high quality laptop has a high market growth because customers need them.

Share capital is just the money raised from selling shares in a business. This is not related to the Boston Matrix though. Just a long term source of finance!

You just need to learn how the Boston Matrix can benefit a business and how the Boston Matrix links to the product life cycle. E.g when to implement a new product, when the product is in the maturity or decline phase. This is a bit long but I hope it helps. Good luck with the exam. You got this! 👍

Thanks so much! I meant to write market share instead of share capital. Market share is how many sales a product gets right? I don't really get how it links to a rising star though - they have a high market growth and high market share- so that would mean they get a lot of sales and a high demand, and surely thats better than a cash cow who has high sales but little demand?

Market share is a businesses portion of sales that fall within the entire market it operates in. This indicates the businesses size within its market. For example, if a soap producing company makes and sells 40 soaps and as a whole 100 soaps are made and sold, this company has a 40% market share.

A star is a very successful product but it requires heavy investment and cash flow may become a problem. Assuming it keeps its market share, stars will eventually become cash cows. Cash cows have little growth but are successful and established products which need little investment (they need a little managing to continue profits however!) So both stars and cash cows have their pros and cons so it just depends on the situation in hand.

I feel quite confident for these business exams, always get good grades without revising! Got a A* on coursework

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thats really good, i got an A in my coursework. but we shouldnt speak to soon about the results of our gcse exams

Anyone feeling ready for unit 1? And unit 3? And how was your coursework?

The longer questions were fine surprisingly, it was more the questions on Organisational Structures and the question on export subsidy or something like that, which I struggled with.

What did people get for the break even and profit calculation questions?

i'm not sure, already forgotten, all i know it was £100,000 divided by £40 (£50 - £10), so it would be.... 2500 per year

How about the profit calculation below it?

That would of been some something like £56,000 as far as i can remember

Please can someone explain the Boston matrix and cash cow and stuff because our teacher hasn't that taught us that!!

How about the profit calculation below it?

We haven't covered anything of unit 3 for tomorrow, has anyone got a unit spec sheet they could link?