Component 1: Markets — Eduqas A-Level Business

Classifying the market a firm sells into is a means to an end: each type changes the marketing mix, the capacity needed and the shape of the cash flow. A niche seller wins a high margin from a small, loyal group but is exposed the moment a large rival copies it, while mass selling buys economies of scale and then fights on price. Selling to other businesses means fewer, larger buyers, longer credit terms and negotiated prices; selling to households means many small transactions and advertising. Services cannot be stocked, so demand peaks must be met with people rather than inventory. A seasonal trade such as a Welsh coastal caravan park earns in summer and pays overheads all year, which is why its cash flow forecast shows a winter trough and why capacity utilisation, actual output divided by maximum possible output times one hundred, looks poor in January.

Three numbers, one warning. Size is the total sold, measured either by value in pounds of revenue or by volume in units, and the two can move in opposite directions when prices fall. Share is the sales of one firm divided by the total sales of the market, times one hundred, expressed as a percentage, and it is the cleanest measure of competitive strength because it strips out whether the whole market grew. Growth is the change in size divided by the original size, times one hundred. The warning is that share can rise while the firm shrinks, if rivals shrink faster, so always read share and size together before judging performance. A rise from twelve per cent to fifteen per cent is a gain of three percentage points, not a gain of three per cent.

Segmenting means splitting a whole market into groups of buyers who want broadly the same thing, so that one mix can be aimed at one group instead of a compromise being aimed at everybody. It is the first step of three: divide the market, choose which groups to serve, then position the product in the mind of that group against named rivals. A segment is only worth having if it can be measured, reached through some media or channel, is large enough to be profitable, and behaves differently from the rest. That last test is the one students skip, and it is where the marks are, because a group that wants exactly what everyone else wants is not a segment at all, only a label on a spreadsheet.

Four families of variable do the work, and they differ in how easy they are to measure against how well they predict what someone will actually buy. Demographic variables such as age, gender, income and family stage are cheap to collect and easy to reach through media buying, but they predict behaviour weakly. Geographic splits suit distribution and regional taste. Psychographic splits use lifestyle, personality and values, which predict better but need survey work. Behavioural splits use what people already do, such as how often they buy, what benefit they seek and how loyal they are, and supermarket loyalty schemes like the Tesco Clubcard exist mainly to collect that data. Business markets are split instead by industry, order size and who signs off the purchase.

Weigh the gain in fit against the loss of scale. Serving a defined group lets a firm charge more, waste less on promotion aimed at people who will never buy, hold customers longer and spot a gap a general rival has missed. The cost is complexity: shorter production runs raise unit costs, several mixes need several budgets, and one version can steal sales from another. Buyers gain choice and products that suit them, but the same information allows price discrimination, and groups judged unprofitable can find themselves poorly served or ignored. There is an ethical edge too, since precise targeting of gambling or high sugar products at vulnerable groups attracts regulation. The verdict turns on segment size, the data and capacity the firm actually has, and whether the difference lasts.

Market structure is a spectrum measured by how many firms supply a market, how high the barriers to entry are and how much pricing power any one seller holds, and the usual yardstick is the concentration ratio, the share of total sales taken by the largest few firms. The big UK grocers hold roughly seven tenths of their market between them, which is why Tesco tracks Aldi's prices weekly, while a grower selling carrots at a wholesale market is close to a price taker. The point in a case study is behaviour rather than the label: the nearer a firm sits to price taking, the more it must compete on cost and the less a brand buys it. The trade-off is that structure is only a starting hypothesis, because a small firm with a patent, a licence or a fierce brand can behave like a monopolist inside a crowded market.

Four structures, told apart by the number of sellers, the height of entry barriers and how differentiated the product is. The theoretical benchmark has many small price takers selling an identical good with free entry and full information, so only normal profit survives in the long run. Add branding and you get many firms with a little pricing power each, as with hairdressers and coffee shops. A few interdependent firms dominating, with sticky prices and rivalry fought through advertising, loyalty schemes and product launches rather than price cuts, is the one that fits most UK case studies, from supermarkets to mobile networks. A single dominant seller with high barriers can set price or output but not both; the UK legal test for market dominance starts at a share above two fifths. Behaviour follows structure: fewer rivals means defending margin, many rivals means chasing cost.

Markets let buyers down when information is asymmetric, when switching is difficult and when a supplier faces no real rival, and protection exists to restore that balance rather than to punish profit. The usual triggers are unsafe or misdescribed goods, unfair contract terms, hard selling to vulnerable buyers, and pricing that exploits inertia, such as the loyalty penalty on insurance renewals that the regulator banned. The Consumer Rights Act of 2015 requires goods to be of satisfactory quality, fit for purpose and as described, while the Competition and Markets Authority, the Financial Conduct Authority and Ofgem police conduct in their sectors. For a business the cost is compliance spending and forgone short term revenue; the return is trust, repeat purchase, referral and avoided fines, and weighing those two is where the evaluation marks sit.

Three linked ideas that sit underneath every pricing decision on the paper. Effective demand is a want backed by the ability to pay, so only funded purchases count; the quantity producers willingly offer rises with price because higher prices cover higher marginal costs and tempt new entrants; and the market settles where the two quantities match, so stocks neither pile up nor run dry. Above that settling price there is excess supply, which is why unsold ranges are discounted in the January sales; below it there is excess demand, queues and resale above face value, as with festival tickets. All of it rests on other things staying constant, an assumption worth challenging in evaluation, because contracts, brand loyalty and menu costs stop firms repricing freely.

Price is the signal that moves information around a market without anyone planning it, and the three functions to name are rationing, incentive and signalling: a rising price rations scarce output to buyers who value it most, signals to producers that this is where the money is, and gives them the incentive to shift resources into it. For a named business the practical use is forecasting and capacity planning, because conditions on the buying side drive sales volume and conditions on the selling side drive input costs, and both feed the budget. Lithium prices doing exactly this pulled new mines into production and then collapsed as supply caught up. The weakness to raise in evaluation is that the mechanism assumes rational buyers and quick adjustment, while real markets carry contracts, loyalty and sticky prices, so a firm cannot reprice every week.

Keep two separate lists, and keep movement apart from shift, because only a change in the good's own price moves a point along a curve. On the buying side the drivers are real incomes, the prices of substitutes and complements, tastes and fashion, advertising and social media, the size and age profile of the population, interest rates on credit purchases, and expectations of future prices. On the selling side they are input costs such as wages, energy and raw materials, technology and labour productivity, indirect taxes and subsidies, weather and harvests, regulation, and the number of firms in the market. A concrete example earns the application mark: high wholesale gas prices cut glasshouse tomato output in the UK, while falling mortgage rates lift demand for fitted kitchens.

Work case by case and always report both outcomes, since answers naming only one lose the second mark. More buyers at every price raises both the settling price and the quantity traded; fewer buyers cuts both. More output offered at every price cuts the settling price but raises quantity; less offered raises price and cuts quantity. How the change splits between price and quantity depends on elasticity, so where buyers have few alternatives, as with petrol or prescription medicines, a supply shock lands mostly on price, and where they have many, it lands on volume instead. If both sides move at once, one of the two outcomes is indeterminate, and saying which one cannot be signed earns more credit than a guess. Close by converting it into revenue, margin and inventory for the named firm.

Draw it properly and the analysis half writes itself. Price goes on the vertical axis, quantity per period on the horizontal, the buying curve slopes down, the selling curve slopes up, and the starting point is where they cross, with dotted lines across to the price and down to the quantity. To show a change, redraw the whole curve left or right rather than bending it, label the new curve clearly, mark the new crossing point and state in words underneath what has happened to price and to quantity. Steep curves show an inelastic response, flat ones an elastic response, which is how the diagram carries the size of the effect and not just its direction. The marks most often thrown away are unlabelled axes, an unlabelled second curve and a diagram the prose never mentions.

The distinction being tested here is shift against movement: a change in the good's own price slides a point along a fixed curve, while anything else, incomes, costs, taxes, technology or tastes, moves the whole curve and produces a new settling point. Work in a fixed order: name the determinant, say which curve moves and in which direction, then read off what happens to price and to quantity together. Elasticity decides how the change splits between the two, so a market where buyers have no alternatives absorbs it mainly in price. The evaluation comes from time and from the other side of the market, because output is often fixed in the short run, rivals respond within months, and the new settling point may be temporary rather than the end of the story.

A market clears where the quantity buyers plan to buy matches the quantity sellers plan to sell, and answers here turn on one distinction: a change in the good's own price moves you along a curve, while anything else shifts the whole curve. On the buying side the shifters are real incomes, the prices of substitutes and complements, tastes, population and expectations. On the selling side they are input costs, technology, indirect taxes and subsidies, and the number of firms in the market. Firms use this to judge whether a price rise is durable or will be competed away, and whether to add capacity. The evaluation is that real markets are sticky: contracts, menu costs and brand loyalty mean adjustment takes months, so a new equilibrium is a direction of travel rather than a dated number. Avian flu cutting UK laying flocks in 2022 shifted egg supply left and lifted shelf prices sharply.

Elasticity measures how strongly buyers respond to a change in one variable, and the reward here is in reading the number, not producing it. Price elasticity compares the percentage change in quantity demanded with the percentage change in price: a value above one, ignoring the negative sign, means demand is price elastic, so cutting price raises total revenue, while a value below one means demand is inelastic and raising price raises revenue. Income elasticity compares the percentage change in quantity demanded with the percentage change in real income, and its sign identifies the type of good being sold. Firms use both to set prices and to judge how exposed a range is to a downturn. The blind spot is that every estimate comes from past data holding other things constant, and response is weaker in the short run because buyers need time to find substitutes.

Goods are classified by how demand responds to a change in real income. Demand for a normal good rises as income rises, and for a necessity it rises slowly, so income elasticity is positive but small. A luxury is a normal good whose demand rises faster than income, giving a large positive figure, which is why sales of new cars and foreign holidays swing violently with the trade cycle. Demand for an inferior good falls as income rises, because buyers trade up to something they previously could not afford, so income elasticity is negative. The label belongs to the buyer, not to the product: own-label value pasta is inferior to a household whose income doubles and normal to one where it does not. Firms use the classification to balance a portfolio so that some lines grow in a boom and others hold up in a recession, which is why supermarkets run value and premium ranges together.