For my business Studies coursework I will be considering the key issues around setting up my own shop situated in York. I have decided to make this a sports shop as there are only a few sports outlets in York which gives me a greater opportunity for success. In addition this is an area that I could specialise in as I have good knowledge around this market already and will be able to use this to my advantage.
It will be called CarverSports which makes it obvious that it is a sports shop and new to the area which should generate some interest. I will believe we should do a range of goods and specialise in a few, less popular sports. I think this will make our company a lot stronger, attract a variety of customers and more likely to make more revenue as there is less competition and good profit margins. We will be the only sports shop in York who sell sportswear such as American Football garments and karate clothes. I think this will give us the edge against the competition. Before we go ahead we need to do some research which I will cover later.
I have decided to go into a partnership with a long known friend of mine Mark. I prefer this to being a sole trader for a number of reasons. Like most businesses, our aim is survival and to prosper. We will do this making sure that our prices are competitive. We will have a range of different sportswear and products that are not sold in many of York’s shops. I think that this is an advantage because there will little competition. Although other sports shops in York are well established our advertising campaign should see us through by attracting new customers. Our marketing needs to be targeted carefully. As I have said previously, we will be using newspaper mainly due to the “coffee table” effect. Hopefully people should soon realize that our shop is good quality and have a look in to see what it is like.
Our business idea is to match our prices with our main competitors and make American Football garments a bit more expensive as they cannot be bought in many other shops. Sales will be lower but will have a higher profit margin which will help our overall profitability. This is called competitive pricing Our main influences to become successful is for customers to recognize that we are a very competitive company and to come into our shop rather than needing to go into our rivals shops to compare prices , quality and range of goods.
One of our main rivals is JJB sports. Our main problem is JJB sports have the ability to stop us achieving our objectives. JJB is a PLC and as such a large company with shares that are sold on the stock exchange. They must make good profits so they can carry on trading and also pay out dividends to their shareholders. It is therefore very important they are successful otherwise everyone would sell the shares, the share price would fall and eventually the company would collapse.
JJB is a well known national company with a trademark name and a good reputation. When I researched into this in the centre of York a lot of people named JJB sports as the main sports shop in York. When I asked why, most responded by saying that it is easy to get to, they have a lot of stock or their prices are cheaper. JJB is also popular because of its advertising. They advertise on the television as well as on radio, in newspapers and in some magazines (mainly sports). Television – This will get your business across to millions of people. However it is very expensive and since my shop is only a local shop, and television shows adverts to people all over the country, the advert would only be applicable to a tiny percentage of people watching and a waste of money.
Radio – This is a cheaper method of advertising than a television advert. Also I could place an advert on local radio for a small cost and it would go out to people all over the local area. Leaflets/Posters – These would be a good idea, since they are very cheap to produce and you can place them anywhere in the local area, or hand them out to people. However people may ignore the adverts, and if I was to produce posters then detailed information could not be placed on them because they would only be seen for a short amount of time.
Magazines and newspapers – If I were to place an ad in the local newspaper I know that this would be seen by people all over the local area. It would also be a fairly low cost. However the disadvantages are that readers do not always look at the advert, and if I were to show an ad in a newspaper then it would be limited to black and white. In conclusion, I have decided just to place an advert in the local newspaper for my shop, and a poster in the window of my shop.
This way it would be seen by a lot of people and it would be more relevant to them all, living in the area. Having a television advert would be a waste of money, since the number of customers it would bring would probably not make the advert worth the setting up costs. A radio advert isn’t a good idea, since it would take some time to make it and people are likely to forget it once they have heard it. The same goes for posters. The advert I have designed is shown on the following page. It is in black and white and fairly small so that it will not be costly to run in the newspaper. On the following page is the poster I plan to show in the window of my shop, this poster can also be produced in colour. The questionnaire survey I did followed used the following question areas. This gave me some valuable field research data to help me make my decision about setting up CarverSport.
