Business SL Internal Assessment

Hello, I am currently working on my Business SL ia which is a commentary on a specific problem or issue of a real firm. Here is the question I have chosen: Is Coca Cola’s decision to form a partnership with Chi Ltd. likely to be a sound profitable one?

I found this topic really interesting, however, I have NO IDEA on how to approach the problem, what business analysing tools to use, what to write, etc. Please tell me what you think about my chosen question and if you have any ideas on how to analyse the problem please write it down. Any suggestion is welcome!!! Thank you.

Thank you so much for your detailed explained, it has definitely helped me to get an idea of what I need to analyse. However, I still don't know how to analyse it; what tools to use.

Should I calculate profitability ratios, investment appraisal such as payback period? I only study Business at SL so I don't know about other analysing tools.

Moreover, what do you mean when you say "use examples"? I need to choose supporting documents for my investigation but I think this refers to articles, final accounts, balance sheets, etc from the businesses.

Do you still have your response to the A level open question? It would surely help me a lot.

Thank you so much for everything!!

Hi,
To use the tools such as profitabilty ratios and payback period you need a lot of info from coke, if you can get it thats great.

Think about other things like 'opportunity cost', whats the next best thing coke could have done with the time and money?

Geographically the companies are very far apart and the culture of nigeria is different to the US, will this affect the deal? Do Coke have previous experience in Africa?

I have not studied SL so im not 100% sure on your mark scheme or what you have learnt but it would be unusual to make an assesment in a business paper without realating it to another example (another company). Check with your tutor and the mark scheme the extent of evidence you need. Use all of the 'tools' you've learnt if you can apply them to the evidence you find, the tools to analyse the financials are one thing but the other tools are all business terms you have been defining over your course. Does that make sense?

I will have a look for my past paper, it was 6 years ago so possibly dont have it but ill check it out.

UPDATE: My teacher told me that this issue might be too broad to analyse, so if you could please give me any ideas of business with specific issue to base my IA on I would be extremely grateful. Or if you can help me with this research question then I'll try to prove my teacher wrong.

I had a look for documents about chi and coca cola, I couldn't find anything broad enough and detailed enough to to answer the question in its current form, can you rephrase it to narrow your answer down little by little until you get something just right.

Such as:


What synergies do coca cola and chi predict will benefit each company by forming a partnership?

Then narrower still:

What synergies do Coca Cola predict they will realise from the companys partnership with Chi?

Notice you need to leave out language that allows for open answers, such as 'how likely' as this is open to interpretation, so you would basically have to calculate the likelyhood of success, so you would have to talk about everything from the personel involved, due dillengence, company resources, structure, company culture etc etc etc.

Thats what your tutor means when they say its too broad to answer, the research would be immemse and even if you were the CEO of Coca Cola you still might not be able to answer the question. You dont need to change the subject though just narrow the potential answer to increase your chance of answering it.

When they say 'supporting documents' they mean sources such as articles from academic journals and things like that. Try google scholar for academic results, for a uni report I use about 20 sources on average.

Its always worth emailing coca cola and check out their annual report online, thats another credible source. Sounds like you dont have to compare too much to other businesses but check this with your tutor.

Does you college have access to any databases for searching academic jounals?

Also business review websites can be good but you are looking for first hand information not news websites. They always say wikipedia and news websites are a no-no but often articles are referenced so you can look up the original source of information.

Whats your word count limit?
Also what is the answer style? essay or report?

It has to be a commentary of 1500 words (not very much hence why it is better to use a narrower research question). Most of my classmates are basing their commentaries on a local business, I'm one of the few who's doing a multinational company... I think it will be easier if I look for a different company and study a different issue, such a high labour turnover, where I can talk about the different motivational theories, perks, rewards, etc. However, I don't know any business with this kind of problem....

Sometimes its better to research a few companies first and see what documents and information you have access to and then decide your question based on the information you have. 1500 words it tight to analyse any problem really so definetly be really specific in your question. At least with a local business you can go and talk to them.

Your original question would be better suited to a disscertaion question 7000-10000 words.

At least you are ambitious though!

Idea! Have you looked at care agencies? Care work has a very high turnover of staff in the UK due to 0 hours contracts and low pay + the nature of the work. I'd bet most 0 hours low paid jobs are similar in nature so thats a good place to start.