Applied business Free Essay Example

1. Introduction “Occurrence happening at a determinable time and place, with or without the participation of human agents. It may be a part of a chain of occurrences as an effect of a preceding occurrence and as the cause of a succeeding occurrence. ” – www. businessdictionary. com The description of an event is an occurrence that can happen just once, or more frequently. The event can be subjected to only invite guests, or can be open to the public to come freely.

Events have a start and finishing time, and businesses can hold them to attract customers, or keep shareholders and their staff happy.

The choice of an event is a crucial decision as making the wrong choice could be detrimental in trying to earn money. In addition, if the choice is poor it can create a bad impression on a business to its shareholders, employees and customers. The event we will be running is: ‘The Meridian Christmas Fair’. The day will include a number of businesses offering their products to the public on a stall of a set size (6ft-2.

5ft), charging i?? 15 a stall and i?? 25 for two.

Anybody from the public is allowed entry to the event, at any time during the day (Sunday 12th December 2010). The event is to have a fun day picking out last minute Christmas presents and enjoy the seasonal atmosphere. We plan to create this seasonal atmosphere by having traditional characteristics like Santa’s Grotto, Christmas songs, decorations and many more effects to get people in the ‘Christmas spirit’.

We will have a Santa impersonator who will provide the distinctive feature of children’s idea of Christmas and have the chance to take a photograph with him too.

A raffle will also be taking place throughout the day, which we will also advertise before the event in order to raise money and give the customers a chance to win some of the donated gifts that the stallholders have donated. We have decided to give all of the proceedings to ‘Great Ormond Street Hospital’ as we thought it was a great cause, which many people can relate to, and an organisation that many want to help. The aim of the day is: – ‘To create an enjoyable festive event for the public, and raising money for ‘Great Ormond Street Hospital’.

We all chose different events to research and then nominated which one we thought would be most successful and appealing to the public, as well as being the most feasible. We used primary research to conduct our support on why we thought our idea would be good, and why it may not be. This gave us the means to choose the best event. We then created a questionnaire after choosing an event to find out what the public wanted for the day. By asking the public directly, means we were committed in making our event a success and wanted to give nothing less than they wanted.

We found that our Christmas Fair was most relevant to the season of December, which was a realistic time measure of when we could hold it. In addition as organisers we were enthusiastic which was motivation. We all wanted to set out in motivating the public to get in the Christmas spirit. It is also affordable and realistic for us to achieve, as we have limited funds available to us. Asking many businesses to take up their time to reserve a stall could seem expensive.

However due to the large amount of advertisement and sponsorship that would be provided with holding a stall, businesses are able to use their profits and will therefore not cost anything for them to present. Also due to our proceeds going to a charity, it makes our local community seem more appealing to people, who want to get involved in helping. In addition parents and students of the school are a great support, which is a benefit when holding it at the school. The reason for why we are holding this event is to raise money for ‘Great Ormond Street Hospital’.

These websites included Greneway Middle School and Roysia Middle School. Other websites including craft related ones were used in order to find as many potential stallholders as possible. We also signed ourselves onto www. stallfinders. co. uk so that stallholders could contact us regarding a space at our fair. In addition we were able to look at other events, where this research enabled us to find a suitable date to place our fair on in order to avoid having our event on the same day as any others as it may affect the profit made and the amount of customers which will attend.

A number of people also helped us with organising the event, including: Tina. Filby Tina Filby gave us advice around the pricing of certain aspects of the day. This includes the entry price, refreshment prices and how much to charge stallholders to reserve a table for their goods. She also gave us advice on which type of businesses to ask and that a variety of stalls are included in order to appeal to a wide range of potential attendees. She told us to include a range of stalls varying from, jewelry, clothes, cakes and many more in order to ensure that we meet the needs of our target audience.

She also told us that we should include an entry fee; however not charge a huge amount in order to not turn people off when they arrive. Other information that was provided was to as well as charging the stallholders for money but to also ask for a donation for the raffle. She informed us that i?? 15 was a satisfactory price for stallholders given the fact they are asked to donate a raffle prize as well. This will help us to save money on raffle prizes we would have otherwise purchased, and enabled us to create the perfect prices in order to maintain customer satisfaction as well as make a decent profit. Mrs.

Taylor Mrs. Taylor helped us to book the hall and also gave us discount on doing so as we are students of the school. She also helped us to find the perfect date to hold the event as she supplied us with information on our competitors and relevant open dates that we could use. She also explained to us why we got a discount off our final expense for the hall, as we are students, raising money for a charitable organisation. The full cost of the hall was i?? 38 per hour, equating to i?? 190 + VAT. However as we are students and running a charitable event we were given a discount and the total fee became i??

50 + 5% insurance. Mrs. Taylor explained that this public liability insurance protects us from any claims made by those that attended or were in the venue that were injured either due to carelessness or by pure chance. A mix of both qualitative and quantitative data was obtained through secondary research. The qualitative data found through secondary research was obtained by speaking to Tina Filby. As she is a regular attendee of events of the same nature, she gave advice about stalls. After speaking to her it was obvious that a wide variety of stalls were needed.

Tina Filby made it extremely clear that a wide variety of stalls are needed for a Christmas Fair event to be successful. Due to this, it is obvious that we need to contact a wide range of people and businesses in request that they reserve a stall. The quantitative data included the price of the hall, the amount of people that could fit within the hall at the same time, the prices charged at other similar events and prices for photos with Santa at the grotto. We found the price of the hall, after a discount from being students, would cost us i?? 50 when it would have cost nearly i?? 200.

This was also made a lot cheaper as the money saved, means more money being given to our charity. After speaking to a teacher we found that the school hall could hold up to a rough figure of 300 people at one time, giving us more chance to have customers as a large sum of people can be in the hall at any given time. We also looked at various websites that sold cups, plates, serviettes, and tablecloths for our refreshments table in order to make more money, and for the event to be enjoyable. 3. Sources of Finance/Feasibility Before staging any event, the feasibility of this event has to be explored.

An event cannot take place is there are not a sufficient amount of organisational resources such as human, financial and physical. Data concerning the feasibility of the event is found through research. Through the use of both primary and secondary research it seems that the reasons for the event are worthwhile as our response back from the questionnaires were positive. Due to the majority of events costing money, it is essential that the source of finance that will be used be identified, as without money we cannot run the preparations of an event.

As money is needed in preparation for our event it is essential that our source of finance be identified. Our beginning source of finance is a small loan from the business department in our school. This loan will be used to purchase a number of stamps in order to send out letters of request to different companies and potential stallholders. Once these letters are sent off and positive replies are returned, the source will come from the money given by each willing stallholder. Each stall will cost i??

15 to reserve and therefore, if, there is a fair amount of stallholders, we will make the event a large amount of money to use to purchase all necessary items and equipment to make the day successful. A budget is created before an event is planned as a financial barrier that is agreed in advance. A budget is used to force people to plan ahead when preparing for the event and improve coordination. It also helps control spending and draws particular attention to waste and unnecessary things.

It also makes the event planners act more responsibly when concerning money and purchases and helps to review the success of the event after it has taken place. A budget may also act as a restraint as lack of funding or inadequate amounts in different aspects in the set up of an event. For example, our budget is the money we receive from stallholders booking fee and the i?? 30 loan we received from our schools business department. This means as long as we do not spend over our budget, we are likely to come out with a profit at the end of the day because we have not lost anything.

It should not be hard to stay within the budget, as the raffle will cost little money due to donations of prizes, allowing us to not have to buy prizes. The donations from different businesses will be repaid by using their business name as sponsorship. The variable costs however are the amount of raffle tickets sold, refreshments bought and the amount of visits to he grotto as these all depend on the amount of people that decide to show up on the day, meaning there is no possible determination whether these will make a profit or not.

A break-even chart was created in order to see just how successful the Christmas Fair would have to be in order to start making a profit once expenses were taken out. The stalls are the main source of income and therefore been put into the break-even chart. This means we are measuring how many stallholders would have to reserve stalls before we begin to make a profit. When charging i?? 15 per stall, we only need to sell 9 stalls to break even taking all expenses into consideration. This break even can be found in Appendix -. 4. Risk Assessment

A risk assessment was taken into precaution of any difficulties that might arise. Potential hazards have to be examined. Potential victims, the likeliness and severity of hazards have to be looked into. This therefore links to the ‘Health and Safety Act 1974’ and the ‘Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations’. This will make the day a lot safer, and mean less chance of people getting injured during the day. If the risks are too high the event is not likely to be feasible and is therefore a very important aspect of planning an event.

A risk assessment includes identifying the potential hazard and those likely to be exposed to a hazard, evaluate the likeliness of the hazard occurring and recording the findings. The final stage of the risk assessment is to monitor, review and revise the assessment. They are important documents as health inspector may ask questions about the risks taken and will limit the risk of any action for civil liability. It also shows that legal requirements have been understood, put into action and followed. All hazards identified seem unlikely to be a problem for us on the day.

However, Food Hygiene is one of our most important regulations as a lot of our profit will be from serving refreshments. Therefore it is extremely important that food is prepared carefully and by someone whom holds a Food Hygiene Certificate, as this means they are aware of what they are doing and may be more professional in the situation. This would therefore minimize the risk of there being any hazard. A stall layout was created in order to place all stalls within the area of the venue and to ensure that there are no stalls blocking any fire exits.

The stall layout also enabled all staff and stallholders to locate all fire exits in case of an emergency. By letting customers know where the exits are located and by doing routine checks to ensure they are always free, the chance of any harm coming to anyone is very small. As there is likely to be small children coming to the event, and possibly some elders there is a risk of tripping on stairs, or near tables etc. As this isn’t unlikely as anything could happen by chance we will prevent this by making sure all stairs are marked with a luminous tape so people are aware.