Economic and management sciences
Grade 6
Your own business venture
Module 12
Market reasearch, production and profitability
1. Market research
- Before you can become an entrepreneur, you need to identify the needs that exist in your environment. You could focus on the expectations that Grade 4 to 7 learners have as far as birthday parties are concerned. You should choose a particular grade of learner; distribute a questionnaire among those learners and use the information gathered through the questionnaire to identify the existing needs.
Activity 1:
To do market research
[lo 4.2
Case study
John (12) and Annette (10) Collins are invited to parties regularly. Although being fun, parties usually cause Mrs Collins a few headaches. She has to buy a gift, make it up appropriately and decorate it, and then she still has to find an interesting card to add to the parcel. The latter usually is more expensive than the gift.
John and Annette have now thought up a brilliant idea to solve Mrs Collins’ problem: to start their own business, making decorations in general and making and selling cards.
- To start with, you have to do some
market research . This means that you have to collect information to enable you to decide whether your idea is viable. Your market is the group of people who would probably buy what you wish to sell.
- John and Annette want to find out from the average 10 – 12 year old whether their plan is a good one – and you are going to help them.
Step 1: Use the questionnaire (Annexure).
Provide questionnaires to the group of learners that your class identified as a potential market.
Step 2: Process the information
Draw up a table with a subsection for each of the categories listed below. This will help you to identify the most popular themes.
Categories:
- Popular decorations.
- Popular amusement.
- Preferred invitation.
- Parent support (Yes/No).
Note down any other important information that you find in the completed questionnaires.
Activity 2:
To identify the most popular themes
[lo 4.2]
- List the 10 most popular themes for birthday parties according to the information gleaned from the questionnaires.
Activity 3:
To design an invitation card
[lo 3.1]
- Choose any one of the above themes and design a pop-up invitation card based on this theme. Consult books from the library to collect as many ideas as possible. Also bring invitation cards to school to determine the requirements for invitation cards.
- Sketch the design for the card. Use colour and add adequate labels, together with the required size.
Sources consulted:
Which information should be included on an invitation card? Write this down in brief.
Activity 4:
To do research on the average price of invitation cards
[lo 3.1]
- Do market research in at least three different shops to determine the cost of available invitation cards and types of cards. Your product will have to be better if it is going to cost more, or cheaper, if it is similar. The cards that are available on the market are referred to as the
supply .
2. Making
Activity 5:
To make an invitation card
[lo 3.1]
- Now make the card (which you designed in Activity 1.5) as well as you can. Bring it to school, exhibit it and ask your classmates to write their honest comments on a sheet of paper provided for that purpose. Incorporate the necessary changes when you make your final product.
