[BUSS3] AQA Business Unit 3 anyone? [Friday 10th of June 2011]

Does anyone know what the 3rd question was again? I think it was something along the lines of, Is Amina right in suggesting that they need a large marketing budget to implement the marketing objectives?

Does anyone know what the 3rd question was again? I think it was something along the lines of, Is Amina right in suggesting that they need a large marketing budget to implement the marketing objectives?

They said they wanted to benefit from economies of scale but their unit price index was will higher than the industry average (industry average was 94)

Their acid ratio went from 1.3 to 0.8. This was a good thing, it reflected that she had implemented JIT in her plans and she had lost 0.5 illiquid assets. 0.8 is still healthy on the acid ratio

My final reccommendation was to keep the book stores as they had high market share, unlike with CD'S, books and technology

They said they wanted to benefit from economies of scale but their unit price index was will higher than the industry average (industry average was 94)

Their acid ratio went from 1.3 to 0.8. This was a good thing, it reflected that she had implemented JIT in her plans and she had lost 0.5 illiquid assets. 0.8 is still healthy on the acid ratio

My final reccommendation was to keep the book stores as they had high market share, unlike with CD'S, books and technology

Amina believes that a significant marketing budget would be necessary for her marketing plan to achieve its objectives. To what extent do you agree with this view?

Thanks What did you put for this? I think I said when talking about why they might not, 1) they are sharing the promotion costs with the mobile network company
2) they could promote the new website in their 50 remaining stores, especially as the age rang that was like mid 30's i think, enjoyed their customer service and were more affluent, so had more money which would be important as the website was selling things for ipads and sony readers.. Meh, it kind of made sense at the time!

i seemed to remember that the size of the marketing budget is not all important, so largely based it on this. So i talked about how skills of the marketing department will also be a important factor. Think i gave an example of how promotion involving media such as a tv campaign would be expensive and therefore require a significant budget. However, generating PR could be another way of promoting, where costs would be far far lower, but also explained negatives of PR. I think i largely weighed up the reasoning why its not significant, but concluded with the point about competiton, with them also probably having large budgets such as supermarkets, and the company wanting to grow, as reasoning why it likely to be a significant factor. Dunno whether that was good now though considering the large bulk of my answer was reasoning againt it

I also but what u said about sharing costs, and therefore benefit from economies of scale (although i might have put this in last question cant remember). Your second point could be considered valid, just depends on how you presented it and whether you supported it with evidence.

I was just wondering, for question 3 I basically weighed up the advantages, saying it would because they need to compete with larger businesses, so the significant budget is necessary, with competitive market etc. But then my downside was that the market is unsteady, where are marketing plan wont work, as seen with introduction of E-readers, so technology is developing a lot. Therefore a marketing plan wont help them ,no matter how big the budget, because the market is unsteady, is that right? for some reason I'm really quite worried about what I've wrote :/

Yeah I think that can be seen as valid, depending how you put it across and if it's interpreted as having relevance by whoever marks it. Don't think it should count as a main point though.

I read question 2 completely different to everyone else. I calculated NPV, didn't show working, calculated payback, but didn't put it in my answer. I didn't see the point in calculating them because they said in the answer, that it was around £25 million and below 3 years. And 18 marks for just those simple calculation was far too many surely?

The question said "how realistic is this?" didn't it? So I talked about whether they could get investment of £100m by analysing the ratios. I know it said "using relevant calculations", but I assumed it meant using ratios instead of 'figures' from other appendices and by using the word "calculations" it would make it obvious.

If that was a simple calculation question why did they ask it in a retarded, incredibly misleading way?

i'm sure it said how realistic are her targets of 25m so you had to calculate to see whether is would be and it was (29.6m)

But still 18 marks, for something that takes literally 2 minutes?

Anyway, how much do you reckon I'll get, I analysed the NPV and Payback, I said that Payback was within 3 years (didn't show calculations) and said that NPV was £29.6 million, but with no working out? Pretty annoyed at that, I didn't think a question could be so simple for 18 marks, and I went and made a question more difficult.

But still 18 marks, for something that takes literally 2 minutes?

Anyway, how much do you reckon I'll get, I analysed the NPV and Payback, I said that Payback was within 3 years (didn't show calculations) and said that NPV was £29.6 million, but with no working out? Pretty annoyed at that, I didn't think a question could be so simple for 18 marks, and I went and made a question more difficult.

What do you mean by main point?

well i worked out the two calculations with working out and then i made a point supporting the statement suggesting that it would work by pointing out the advantages of these calculations and then i wrote a paragraph on point out the drawbacks of these calculations. and then i wrote a conclusion(i think i mainly wrote about other variables such as external factors)
i suppose payback is correct but i think you would have to be a bit more precise to gain the marks as that could be a complete guess. if you analysed NPV and payback well done you'll get marks on that. did you say you used other calculations to support your argument? if so that will replace application marks lost from not calculating payback etc. i'm sure you'll get decent marks for that question and afterall its question 4 which is more important