Consumers
What is a consumer?
A person who buys or uses a good or service.
What is a need?
Something essential for a person to live safely and healthily.
What is the main purpose of most businesses?
To provide goods or services to customers and make a profit.
What is market research?
Collecting information about customers and the market to help a business make decisions.
What does it mean for a business to act ethically?
To behave honestly, fairly and responsibly towards customers, workers and the community.
A student buys a chocolate bar from the school canteen. Who is the consumer?
The student.
Which is a need: a gaming console, designer shoes, clean drinking water or a new phone?
Clean drinking water.
A good is a physical product you can generally touch, while a service is an activity or work provided to a customer.
A pair of shoes = good. A haircut = service.
Give one way a business could conduct market research.
Surveys, interviews, focus groups, observations or analysing existing information.
A business discovers that one of its products is faulty. What should it do?
Tell customers about the problem, stop selling the faulty product and fix or replace it.
A business sells two different flavours of chips. It notices that customers are buying the cheese flavour much more often. What could the business do with this information?
It could stock more cheese-flavoured chips because customers are showing a preference for them.
A student has $30. They want to buy a new video game for $30 but also need lunch for the next three days. What should they prioritise?
Lunch, because it is a need while the video game is a want.
A business makes $5,000 in sales and has $3,000 in expenses. How much profit does it make?
$2,000
A business wants to create a new school lunch product. What is one important thing it should find out from students before creating it?
What students want, such as their preferred flavours, price, size or type of product.
A business creates a fake five-star review for its own product. Is this ethical or unethical? Why?
because the business is misleading customers by pretending the review came from a genuine customer.
A customer has $20 to spend. They can either buy a $20 pair of headphones or four $5 meals. What factor is influencing their decision?
Their limited budget/money.
Explain why something can be a need for one person but a want for another person.
People's circumstances are different. For example, a car may be a want for someone who has other transport options but a need for someone who relies on it to get to work.
A business is losing customers because another business sells a similar product for less money. What is this business experiencing?
Competition.
business surveys 500 students but only asks, "Would you buy our amazing new product?" Why might this survey produce unreliable information?
The question is biased because it describes the product as "amazing" and may encourage students to give a positive answer.
A business discovers that its product costs $2 to make but customers are willing to pay $20. The business decides to charge $10 instead of $20 because it believes $10 is a fair price. Is this an ethical decision? Explain.
The business can choose its price, and charging a fair price while still making a profit can be an ethical business decision.
A shop sells two types of school bags. Students keep buying Bag A because it is cheaper and has more pockets. What should the business learn from this?
Students prefer bags that are affordable and useful, so the business should consider what customers want when designing and selling its products.
You have $50. You need new school shoes that cost $40, but you also want a new video game that costs $50. You can only choose one. Which should you choose and why?
The school shoes, because they are a need, while the video game is a want.
A business sells a toy for $20. It costs the business $12 to make the toy. If the business sells 10 toys, how much money does it make in profit?
$80 profit.
$20 − $12 = $8 profit per toy
$8 × 10 = $80
A business wants to sell a new type of ice cream at school. Before making it, what are two questions the business could ask students to help decide what ice cream to make?
Any two reasonable answers, such as:
A business knows that one of its products is faulty but decides not to tell customers because it doesn't want to lose money. Is this ethical or unethical? Explain why.
Unethical, because the business is hiding important information from customers and could put them at risk.