The whole course, theme by theme

• Numerical foundations: units, ratios and percentage bases

  • Handle ratios, fractions, unit rates and averages with consistent units
  • Calculate percentages and percentage changes without mixing bases
  LessonPractice
• Read tables, charts and indices; check evidence quality

  • Construct and interpret labelled graphs, axes and scales
  • Interpret a base-100 index and distinguish index points from percent changes
  • Combine numerical and qualitative evidence rather than letting one statistic decide
  • Translate evidence between prose, tables and graphics and explain its significance
  Coming
• Read the task, apply a case and build a causal explanation

  • Identify the exact command, factor count, options, objective and business in a prompt
  • Select source details that change the explanation, with exact extract references
  • Build a defensible cause, intermediate consequence and objective-linked outcome
  • Calculate relevant evidence and explain what it changes in the argument
  • Read unseen case evidence critically; distinguish dated research, source facts and own inference
  Coming

1.1 Meeting customer needs

• 1.1.1
  Market size, share and growth

  • Calculate market size and share; compare a niche with a mass-market opportunity
  • Explain how online retail, innovation and changing demand alter a firm's market
  • Distinguish competitive pressure, measurable risk and uncertainty in a business decision
  LessonPractice
• 1.1.2
  Market research

  • Choose market or product orientation and a suitable primary/secondary research method
  • Separate qualitative insight from numerical estimates; diagnose sampling size and bias
  • Use websites, social networks and databases to investigate a defined customer segment
  LessonPractice
• 1.1.3
  Market positioning

  • Build a two-axis market map and justify a plausible competitive position
  • Explain how differentiation and added value support a customer's willingness to pay
  LessonPractice

1.2 The market

• 1.2.1
  Demand

  • Separate a price movement from a demand shift caused by substitutes, complements or income
  • Trace tastes, advertising, demographics, seasonality and shocks through demand to a business outcome
  LessonPractice
• 1.2.2
  Supply

  • Predict the supply effect of input costs, technology, indirect taxes and subsidies
  • Explain how a disruption changes supply and constrains a firm's sales
  LessonPractice
• 1.2.3
  Markets and equilibrium

  • Draw labelled demand and supply curves with an initial equilibrium
  • Shift the correct curve and identify the resulting price and sales-volume change
  • Explain the diagram in the specific business context rather than describing line movement
  LessonPractice
• 1.2.4
  Price elasticity of demand

  • Calculate PED from percentage changes and interpret sign and magnitude
  • Explain why substitutes, necessity, branding and time affect pricing freedom
  • Calculate before/after revenue and test a proposed price change against PED
  LessonPractice
• 1.2.5
  Income elasticity of demand

  • Calculate YED and distinguish normal, inferior and income-sensitive products
  • Use the customer's income outlook to assess demand risk and business strategy
  LessonPractice

1.3 Marketing mix and strategy

• 1.3.1
  Product and service design

  • Choose a defensible balance between usefulness, appearance and production cost
  • Assess redesign for resource conservation, reuse, recycling and ethical sourcing
  LessonPractice
• 1.3.2
  Branding and promotion

  • Choose an appropriate promotion channel and corporate/product brand approach
  • Trace branding through differentiation, pricing power and customer price responsiveness
  • Evaluate advertising, sponsorship, social/viral campaigns and emotional positioning for a stated audience
  LessonPractice
• 1.3.3
  Pricing strategies

  • Calculate a cost-plus selling price with the stated markup base
  • Compare skimming, penetration, predatory, competitive and psychological pricing in context
  • Recommend a price approach using elasticity, brand, rivalry, life-cycle stage and online comparison
  LessonPractice
• 1.3.4
  Distribution

  • Compare direct and intermediary distribution for reach, control and cost
  • Explain how online delivery or a shift from selling goods to providing a service changes distribution
  Coming
• 1.3.5
  Marketing strategy

  • Identify a life-cycle stage and choose a defensible product or promotion extension
  • Use Boston portfolio positions to recommend allocation of resources
  • Adapt marketing for mass/niche and B2B/B2C customers; explain a route to loyalty
  Coming

1.4 Managing people

• 1.4.1
  Approaches to staffing

  • Evaluate staff investment versus cost and flexible options including outsourcing
  • Distinguish dismissal from redundancy using a supplied scenario
  • Compare individual negotiation with collective bargaining and explain consequences for both sides
  Coming
• 1.4.2
  Recruitment, selection and training

  • Choose internal/external recruitment and selection methods with cost and suitability reasons
  • Compare induction, workplace and off-site training for a specific skill gap
  Coming
• 1.4.3
  Organisational design

  • Read hierarchy, reporting lines, span of control and decision location from an organisation chart
  • Compare tall, flat and matrix structures through communication, efficiency and motivation
  Coming
• 1.4.4
  Motivation

  • Apply Taylor, Mayo, Maslow and Herzberg to diagnose a motivation problem
  • Compare piece rates, commission, bonuses, profit sharing and performance-related pay
  • Select delegation, consultation, empowerment, teamwork or flexible work with a mechanism
  • Distinguish enrichment, rotation and enlargement and assess their likely employee effect
  Coming
• 1.4.5
  Leadership

  • Distinguish leading change and direction from managing everyday processes
  • Compare autocratic, paternalistic, democratic and laissez-faire leadership for the stated workforce and situation
  Coming

1.5 Entrepreneurs and leaders

• 1.5.1
  The role of an entrepreneur

  • Explain the changing work of starting, operating, expanding and innovating within a business
  • Evaluate barriers to entrepreneurship, including finance, skills and resources, and how a founder responds to risk and uncertainty
  Coming
• 1.5.2
  Entrepreneurial motives and characteristics

  • Connect a founder's characteristics and skills to a plausible business challenge
  • Compare maximising and satisficing profit with ethical, social, independence and home-working motives
  Coming
• 1.5.3
  Business objectives

  • Distinguish survival, profit, sales, share and cost-efficiency objectives
  • Explain trade-offs involving staff welfare, customer satisfaction and social outcomes
  Coming
• 1.5.4
  Forms of business

  • Compare sole traders, partnerships and private companies through ownership and control
  • Explain franchise, social-enterprise, lifestyle and online business models
  • Evaluate a move to public share ownership and flotation
  Coming
• 1.5.5
  Business choices and opportunity cost

  • Identify the next-best alternative forgone and explain a decision's trade-off
  Coming
• 1.5.6
  Moving from entrepreneur to leader

  • Explain why delegation, management systems and leadership demands change as a founder's business expands
  Coming

2.1 Raising finance

• 2.1.1
  Internal finance

  • Compare owner savings, retained earnings and asset sales through availability, control and opportunity cost
  Coming
• 2.1.2
  External finance

  • Match family/friends, banks, peers, angels, crowdfunding and other firms to financing needs
  • Compare loans, shares, venture capital and overdrafts through cost, risk and control
  • Assess leasing, trade credit and grants for the amount, purpose and duration needed
  Coming
• 2.1.3
  Liability

  • Explain how limited/unlimited liability changes exposure of business owners
  • Choose a finance method consistent with legal form and the provider's risk
  Coming
• 2.1.4
  Business plans and cash-flow forecasts

  • Identify what a lender needs to see in a business plan
  • Calculate net cash movement, opening and closing balances and revise a forecast
  • Assess forecast usefulness when timing, assumptions or customer payments change
  Coming

2.2 Financial planning

• 2.2.1
  Sales forecasting

  • Explain a forecast's purpose and adjust expectations for customer, economy and rival changes
  • Evaluate forecast uncertainty before committing resources
  Coming
• 2.2.2
  Sales, revenue and costs

  • Calculate volume, price and revenue with consistent units
  • Separate fixed and variable costs; calculate total and per-unit costs at a given output
  Coming
• 2.2.3
  Contribution and break-even

  • Calculate unit contribution and break-even output, handling zero/negative contribution honestly
  • Read/draw a break-even chart and calculate a margin of safety
  • Assess the assumptions and limitations before using break-even to decide
  LessonPractice
• 2.2.4
  Budgets and variances

  • Choose historical or zero-based budgets for a stated purpose
  • Calculate and label favourable/adverse variances using the correct cost/revenue direction
  • Explain why a budget can mislead or constrain performance
  Coming

2.3 Managing finance

• 2.3.1
  Profit and profit margins

  • Calculate gross, operating and year-end profit from a simplified income statement
  • Calculate the three profit margins and recommend a relevant improvement
  • Explain why a profitable firm can run short of cash
  LessonPractice
• 2.3.2
  Liquidity and working capital

  • Identify current assets, inventory and current liabilities; calculate current and acid-test ratios
  • Calculate working capital and explain its role in paying short-term obligations
  • Assess a liquidity improvement with its effect on cash, profit and stakeholder risk
  Practice
• 2.3.3
  Business failure

  • Separate financial causes such as cash shortages from non-financial causes such as weak management
  • Link several causes into a contextual explanation and evaluate a preventative response
  Coming

2.4 Resource management

• 2.4.1
  Production, productivity and efficiency

  • Choose job, batch, flow or cell production for the product and demand pattern
  • Calculate productivity and explain how changing input/output affects competitiveness
  • Distinguish productivity from efficiency and compare labour/capital intensity
  Coming
• 2.4.2
  Capacity utilisation

  • Calculate utilisation from actual and possible output with a matching time period
  • Evaluate spare/strained capacity and a practical way to adjust utilisation
  Coming
• 2.4.3
  Stock control and lean production

  • Read stock levels, reorder point, lead time and buffer stock from a diagram
  • Evaluate stock-out risk, holding cost and just-in-time supply reliability
  • Explain waste reduction and lean operations as routes to competitive advantage
  Coming
• 2.4.4
  Quality management

  • Distinguish inspection, prevention, quality circles and organisation-wide quality management
  • Assess continual improvement and trace its cost/customer effect
  Coming

2.5 External influences

• 2.5.1
  Economic influences

  • Interpret inflation/CPI and explain effects on costs, prices and demand
  • Calculate an exchange conversion and analyse appreciation/depreciation for an importer/exporter
  • Trace interest, tax, spending and business-cycle changes through a firm's decisions; assess uncertainty
  Coming
• 2.5.2
  Legislation

  • Explain the business effects of consumer, employee and environmental protection
  • Evaluate competition and health/safety rules through cost, trust and rivalry using supplied facts
  Coming
• 2.5.3
  The competitive environment

  • Assess how market size and competitive pressure change a firm's strategic choices
  Coming

3.1 Business objectives and strategy

• 3.1.1
  Corporate objectives

  • Translate a mission/aim into an observable corporate objective
  • Critique a mission statement against evidence of actual decisions
  Coming
• 3.1.2
  Corporate strategy

  • Apply Ansoff and Porter's Strategic Matrix to a proposed direction
  • Use portfolio analysis and distinctive capabilities to explain competitive advantage
  • Compare a strategic choice with tactical implementation and its resource commitments
  Coming
• 3.1.3
  SWOT analysis

  • Classify internal strengths/weaknesses and external opportunities/threats accurately
  • Turn prioritised SWOT evidence into a contextual decision rather than a list
  Coming
• 3.1.4
  External influences on strategy

  • Use PESTLE and rivalry evidence to identify a strategic constraint
  • Apply all Five Forces to assess industry pressure and a plausible response
  Coming

3.2 Business growth

• 3.2.1
  Growth

  • Explain internal/external scale economies, bargaining power, share, brand and profit motives
  • Analyse diseconomies, communication problems and overtrading during growth
  Coming
• 3.2.2
  Mergers and takeovers

  • Distinguish mergers, takeovers and horizontal/backward/forward integration
  • Assess financing, synergies and rapid-integration problems using evidence
  Coming
• 3.2.3
  Organic growth

  • Distinguish organic expansion and identify a realistic internal route
  • Compare its pace, control and risk with inorganic expansion
  Coming
• 3.2.4
  Reasons for staying small

  • Evaluate differentiation, responsiveness, service and e-commerce as reasons to remain small
  Coming

3.3 Decision-making techniques

• 3.3.1
  Quantitative sales forecasting

  • Calculate three-period and four-quarter moving averages and align time labels correctly
  • Interpret a scatter plot, draw a reasonable best-fit line and extrapolate cautiously
  • Evaluate structural change, data quality and correlation limits in a forecast
  Coming
• 3.3.2
  Investment appraisal

  • Calculate simple payback, including a justified fraction of a year
  • Calculate ARR using average annual profit and the stated investment base
  • Calculate NPV from supplied discount factors and signed net cash flows
  • Compare appraisal results with assumptions, risk and non-financial constraints
  LessonPractice
• 3.3.3
  Decision trees

  • Construct/read decision and chance nodes with valid probabilities
  • Calculate expected monetary outcomes and subtract relevant decision costs once
  • Assess probability reliability and explain why expected value is not a guaranteed outcome
  Coming
• 3.3.4
  Critical path analysis

  • Complete an activity network with valid precedence and identify the longest duration route
  • Calculate forward earliest-start and backward latest-finish values
  • Calculate activity total float and interpret scheduling flexibility
  • Evaluate resource, duration and dependency assumptions behind the schedule
  Coming

3.4 Influences on business decisions

• 3.4.1
  Corporate influences and short-termism

  • Explain a trade-off between immediate results and longer-term resilience
  • Compare evidence-led choices with subjective judgement and their limitations
  Coming
• 3.4.2
  Corporate culture

  • Distinguish strong/weak cultures and power, role, task and person orientations
  • Explain how culture forms and why an established pattern resists change
  Coming
• 3.4.3
  Shareholders and stakeholders

  • Identify stakeholders and their distinct priorities from a case
  • Evaluate shareholder-return priorities against wider interests and conflicts
  Coming
• 3.4.4
  Business ethics

  • Assess profit/ethics trade-offs in strategic decisions and pay/rewards
  • Evaluate a CSR commitment using evidence of costs, outcomes and credibility
  Coming

3.5 Assessing competitiveness

• 3.5.1
  Interpreting financial statements

  • Extract decision-relevant information from income and position statements
  • Explain why different stakeholders interpret the same figures differently
  Coming
• 3.5.2
  Ratio analysis

  • Calculate gearing and ROCE with the specified definitions of liabilities, equity and operating profit
  • Compare ratios across time/firms and evaluate accounting, sector and snapshot limitations
  Coming
• 3.5.3
  Human resource performance

  • Calculate labour productivity, turnover, retention and absenteeism with matching denominators
  • Interpret the measures together before diagnosing performance
  • Assess financial rewards, employee shares, consultation and empowerment as targeted responses
  Coming

3.6 Managing change

• 3.6.1
  Causes and effects of change

  • Diagnose size, results, ownership, transformational leadership or external drivers
  • Trace change through competitiveness, output efficiency, finance and stakeholders
  Coming
• 3.6.2
  Managing change

  • Evaluate how culture, scale, speed and resistance affect a change programme
  • Recommend a practical response to a stated source of resistance
  Coming
• 3.6.3
  Scenario planning and risk

  • Assess disruption risks including natural hazards, IT failure and loss of key staff
  • Develop and evaluate continuity and succession responses without treating a scenario as a prediction
  Coming

4.1 Globalisation

• 4.1.1
  Growing economies

  • Compare UK and emerging-economy growth from supplied data without treating regions as uniform
  • Trace growth into trading opportunities and employment patterns
  • Interpret GDP per head, literacy, health and HDI with limitations
  Coming
• 4.1.2
  International trade and business growth

  • Explain imports/exports, specialisation and competitive advantage at firm level
  • Distinguish FDI from trade and connect investment abroad to business growth
  Coming
• 4.1.3
  Globalisation

  • Trace liberalisation, political change and cheaper transport/communication into cross-border activity
  • Explain the roles of transnational firms, FDI, migration, labour-force growth and structural change
  Coming
• 4.1.4
  Protectionism

  • Distinguish tariffs, quotas, domestic subsidies and regulatory barriers
  • Assess protection's effects on domestic producers, importers, exporters and customers
  Coming
• 4.1.5
  Trading blocs

  • Explain how the EU single market, ASEAN and the specification's historic NAFTA example alter trading conditions
  • Evaluate membership/access effects for a specific business; separate historic names from current arrangements
  Coming

4.2 Global markets and business expansion

• 4.2.1
  Why firms trade abroad

  • Compare home-market saturation/rivalry with scale and risk-spreading opportunities abroad
  • Evaluate offshoring/outsourcing and extending a product's life across countries
  Coming
• 4.2.2
  Choosing an overseas market

  • Compare income, infrastructure, political stability, exchange rates and business conditions across candidates
  • Recommend a market using explicit priorities and acknowledge conflicting indicators
  Coming
• 4.2.3
  Choosing an overseas production base

  • Compare cost, skills, infrastructure, bloc access, incentives, stability and resource availability
  • Combine likely financial return with operational and political risk in a location recommendation
  Coming
• 4.2.4
  Global mergers and joint ventures

  • Explain access to markets, brands/patents, resources and risk spreading as expansion motives
  • Compare an acquisition with a joint venture through control, knowledge and competitiveness
  Coming
• 4.2.5
  Global competitiveness

  • Analyse an exchange-rate movement's effect on an internationally active firm's relative costs/prices
  • Assess differentiation, cost advantages and skill shortages as sources of competitive performance
  Coming

4.3 Global marketing

• 4.3.1
  Global marketing

  • Compare standardisation/localisation and ethnocentric, geocentric and polycentric approaches
  • Adapt the four Ps and Ansoff choices to an overseas market with reasons
  Coming
• 4.3.2
  Global niche markets

  • Identify a cross-border niche while respecting differences in interests and values
  • Adapt product, price, promotion and distribution for that niche
  Coming
• 4.3.3
  Cultural and social factors

  • Diagnose taste, language, meaning and translation problems in an international campaign
  • Recommend a culturally suitable change to branding or promotion using case evidence
  Coming

4.4 Global industries and companies (multinational corporations)

• 4.4.1
  The impact of multinationals

  • Assess local jobs, wages, conditions, suppliers, community and environmental effects
  • Analyse FDI, payments flows, skills/technology, consumers and business-culture effects
  • Explain tax receipts and transfer pricing as part of a balanced national-impact assessment
  Coming
• 4.4.2
  Multinationals and ethics

  • Evaluate stakeholder conflicts, pay/conditions and emissions/waste decisions
  • Assess labour exploitation, child labour, misleading labels and unsuitable promotion in a global supply chain
  Coming
• 4.4.3
  Controlling multinationals

  • Compare legal controls, political influence, pressure groups and social scrutiny
  • Assess the effectiveness and limits of an accountability response in a cross-border case
  Coming

• Explain and construct under time pressure

  • Identify the exact command, factor count, options, objective and business in a prompt
  • Select source details that change the explanation, with exact extract references
  • Build a defensible cause, intermediate consequence and objective-linked outcome
  • Construct and interpret labelled graphs, axes and scales
  Coming
• A 10-mark assessment with a supported judgement

  • Develop a contextual counterargument, uncertainty or limitation rather than a generic caveat
  • Compare the significance of alternatives using the same decision criterion
  • Reach a supported overall judgement for 10/12-mark assessment
  Coming
• Financial arithmetic, evidence and 12-mark assessment

  • Calculate and interpret cost, revenue, profit, contribution and break-even
  • Calculate relevant evidence and explain what it changes in the argument
  • Develop a contextual counterargument, uncertainty or limitation rather than a generic caveat
  • Compare the significance of alternatives using the same decision criterion
  • Reach a supported overall judgement for 10/12-mark assessment
  Coming
• Theme 2 source pack and numerical limitations

  • Combine numerical and qualitative evidence rather than letting one statistic decide
  • Translate evidence between prose, tables and graphics and explain its significance
  • Calculate relevant evidence and explain what it changes in the argument
  • Develop a contextual counterargument, uncertainty or limitation rather than a generic caveat
  Coming
• Quantitative decision lab: appraise, forecast and schedule

  • Calculate investment outcomes and interpret conflicting appraisal results
  • Combine numerical and qualitative evidence rather than letting one statistic decide
  • Calculate relevant evidence and explain what it changes in the argument
  • Develop a contextual counterargument, uncertainty or limitation rather than a generic caveat
  Coming
• Compare two options and recommend one in 20 marks

  • Develop a contextual counterargument, uncertainty or limitation rather than a generic caveat
  • Compare the significance of alternatives using the same decision criterion
  • Reach a supported overall judgement for 10/12-mark assessment
  • Recommend one specified option for a two-option 20-mark task with decisive contextual reasons
  • Connect relevant marketing/people and finance/operations/strategy/global knowledge without irrelevant theory
  Coming
• Balanced assessment of two aspects in 8 marks

  • Select source details that change the explanation, with exact extract references
  • Build a defensible cause, intermediate consequence and objective-linked outcome
  • Develop a contextual counterargument, uncertainty or limitation rather than a generic caveat
  • Compare the significance of alternatives using the same decision criterion
  Coming
• Paper 3 research, unseen evidence and synoptic decisions

  • Calculate relevant evidence and explain what it changes in the argument
  • Recommend one specified option for a two-option 20-mark task with decisive contextual reasons
  • Connect relevant marketing/people and finance/operations/strategy/global knowledge without irrelevant theory
  • Read unseen case evidence critically; distinguish dated research, source facts and own inference
  Coming
• Full-paper rehearsal, feedback and targeted repair

  • Handle ratios, fractions, unit rates and averages with consistent units
  • Calculate percentages and percentage changes without mixing bases
  • Construct and interpret labelled graphs, axes and scales
  • Interpret a base-100 index and distinguish index points from percent changes
  • Calculate and interpret cost, revenue, profit, contribution and break-even
  • Calculate investment outcomes and interpret conflicting appraisal results
  • Interpret PED and YED values when making a business decision
  • Combine numerical and qualitative evidence rather than letting one statistic decide
  • Translate evidence between prose, tables and graphics and explain its significance
  • Identify the exact command, factor count, options, objective and business in a prompt
  • Select source details that change the explanation, with exact extract references
  • Build a defensible cause, intermediate consequence and objective-linked outcome
  • Calculate relevant evidence and explain what it changes in the argument
  • Develop a contextual counterargument, uncertainty or limitation rather than a generic caveat
  • Compare the significance of alternatives using the same decision criterion
  • Reach a supported overall judgement for 10/12-mark assessment
  • Recommend one specified option for a two-option 20-mark task with decisive contextual reasons
  • Connect relevant marketing/people and finance/operations/strategy/global knowledge without irrelevant theory
  • Read unseen case evidence critically; distinguish dated research, source facts and own inference
  Coming