The document describes a student project to run a mock business venture selling breads and Polaroid photos to raise funds for the Breast Cancer Welfare Association. It discusses objectives to donate all profits to BCWA to support women with breast cancer. Products, pricing, distribution, job roles and green measures are outlined. Promotional strategies included slogans and a mobile store. Competition and target markets of local university students are analyzed. The project provided practical business experience for the students.
Business students often learn about business management or product marketing in a traditional classroom setting. Unfortunately, this pedagogical method suffers from a major drawback i.e. it does not provide students with the practical experiences that are equally important as their theoretical counterpart. As a consequence, the students’ mastery in these topics is superficial and unstimulating.
To address this shortcoming, this project will provide students with an opportunity to run a mock business venture and thereby gain the relevant practical experiences. In addition, it will also fulfil another learning objective i.e. to comprehend the social responsibilities of a business and how to discharge them effectively. For this last purpose, students will donate 100% of their profits from the project to the charitable organization of their choice.
This event has enabled us to describe and analyse the theories of human resources management, marketing, production and finance and their applications. Other than that, we can also apply ethical and social responsibilities as well as undertake leadership roles and make quality decisions/judgments in the context of simulated business environments.
1. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The aim of this project is to provide students with an opportunity to run a mock
business venture and thereby gain the relevant practical experiences .All the profit that
we gain will be donated to the Breast Cancer Welfare Association ( BCWA). This
association is a worldwide organization to fulfil the need for peer support for women
with breast cancer .After doing the report,we get to understand more about the roles of
human resources management, marketing, operations and finance in business .We also
have to balance up all the account after every day sales to make sure the account is in
proper condition. Practically,this project was a whole new experience we can gain in
managing and running a business.
2. OBJECTIVES
After discussing with our teammates ,we decided to run this charity drive and donate all
the profit we gain to the Breast Cancer Welfare Association Malaysia ( BCWA) .This
association is a worldwide organization to fulfill the need for peer support for women
with breast cancer.However ,the organization that we are going to donate is within
Malaysia.
The money that we donated will be used by this association to provide emotional, social
and material support for individuals with breast cancer .It also strengthen the capacity
of individuals with breast cancer to self-manage during and after treatment. Moreover,
this association also promotes public education on general health and breast health
issues including early detection of breast cancer.For instance, during the month of
October is a worldwide Breast Cancer Day where they will organize campaign and event
to raise fund for the association to help women in need.The target for our sale is RM
1000 and another RM 1000 is from sponsorship.
3. TARGET MARKET
The main target of our customer for this charity drive was the students in Taylor’s
University.However ,during the last two days of sale ,we change our strategy target due
to the decrease amount of students around the campus .Two of our member was in
charge to take care of the booth whereas the other two members will be in charge of
selling our products out of the campus ,targeting students from Sunway College and
Inti University.
Students
Percentage ( % )
Taylor’s University
83
Sunway College
10
IntiUniversity
7
We sell our bread from 9am to 5 pm.During the morning ,our maintarget are students
who have not got their breakfast yet before class and also staff that are working in the
office .In the evening ,we went around the campus from class to class and also
divisional office to sells our breads to them .From the charity drive ,we can concluded
that the students spending power was generous .Some of the students even resisted
for us to keep the change that they bought as an act of kindness to donate the money
for charity .As our main target was students ,the pricing of our product was kept in a
cheaper range. Besides that,we did also sells hand-made cards with Polaroid to target
couples as the charity drive week was fall in the same week as Valentine day.
Nowadays,instant polaroid are very trending among the youngster and that is also one
of the reason we make it as one of the main product of our sale.
4. COMPETITION ANALYSIS
Competition very common happened in business field. Everyone would like to be better
and more outstanding than others. This then led to competition. Sometimes the
competition can be an accelerator, which keeps on pushing the team members to
challenge themselves and create the impossibilities. However, sometimes the
competition may lead to depression and giving up of certain efforts. This can be seen
throughout the whole charity drive.
During the charity drive, we found two competitors who seemed to be the most
competitive and threatening to our business of selling breads and Polaroid.
Team Mr. Bean
Competitors Analysis
Team Henna
Sue Yi, Edwin, Johnson, Kimberley
Group members
Joyee, Kerneng, Sim, Shirley
Soya Bean drinks
Fruits/ Snacks
Nice quality of product
(compliment for the soya
bean)
Good time of selling fruits
(how weather)
Low in price
Low profit
Product not attractive
No specific packaging that
can represent team Mr.
Bean
Product not needed that
much (snacks)
Lack of market among
students
Dessert after having meal
or an appetizer before meal
Cheap price
Good market among
students
Product selling
Strength
Weakness
Reason for attraction
Henna
Phone casing
Low cost price
Fresh to student
High profit
Easy to prepare the
product
Can be prepared in a
large amount
Time consuming while
drawing Henna
Less variety of
customers (mostly
girls)
Skills needed
Interesting product
(especially for
foreigner)
Welcomed by gang of
friends
5. PRODUCTS
Our main product of the sale is breads and handmade card with Polaroid.The breads
are taken from Free Mori Bakery located at SS15 that offers various kinds of
sophisticated pastries, cakes and breads.
Types of bread
Baby Crabby
Sunshine Beach
Cheese Bun
Description
8. Bombyx
Apple Danish
Matcha Cookies
The breads that we sold during the charity week are breads that we selected out before
selling .The pricing of the breads are also one of our consideration while choosing to
suit the target market ( students ) .There are variety of breads and cookies ranging
from sweet pastries to salty breads.
9. PACKAGING
The packaging for our breads was simple with just a plastic wrapper with wordings of
the type of breads available in Free Mori .One of the ways they promote themselves
through the packaging of their products.The packaging does not really attract the
customer as we are just selling breads to people does not concern much about the
wrapper.
Transparent plastic wrapper
10. PRICING
Product
Marble (Chocolate)
Cheese Bun
Parmesan Ham
Lasso
Deluxe Hotdog Bun
Sunshine Beach
Crispy Reddy
Baby Crabby
Black Angel
The Tornado
Mille Danish
Hammershus
Apple Danish
Mango Danish
Bombyx Mori
Matcha Cookies
Chocolate Almond Cookies
Polaroid
Cost Price
RM2.10
RM2.25
RM2.25
RM2.25
RM3.00
RM1.40
RM1.60
RM1.40
RM1.40
RM1.25
RM2.00
RM2.00
RM2.00
RM2.00
RM1.75
RM3.00
RM3.95
RM18.00
Selling Price
RM5.00
RM5.00
RM5.00
RM5.00
RM5.00
RM5.00
RM5.00
RM3.00
RM3.00
RM5.00
RM5.00
RM5.00
RM5.00
RM5.00
RM5.00
RM7.00
RM7.00
RM24.00
Attractiveness
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
-
Popular
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Price Setting
The bread which has high attractiveness and popular is selling more expensive because
customer will buy them more than buy others. Some of them like parmesan ham,
deluxe hotdog bun and crispy reddy are best seller among those breads because they
made by hotdog and ham. For the Polaroid, the price is setting lower than market price
to attract the customer.
Strategies
The strategy used when having difficult on selling breads is we set up a mobile store to
sell the breads and cookies. The mobile stores are group member carry a Carton with
breads and cookies and go around the school. Breakfast and lunch period are the bestselling time for breads. During this period, we set up two mobile stores to move around
the school to sell the breads.
11. PROMOTION
In order to increase the sales of breads and Polaroid, promotion is very needed
especially in the competitive environment. At first the strategy plan provided by the
Free Mori company is the token which can exchange free gift (cookies) if purchase
more than RM 5. However, the plan did not run that well as people seldom stop by and
listen to such a long description of story. It would be time consuming and our time for
promotion will be reduced down. Therefore, we came out another way of promoting our
products.
First promotion plan: Using of slogan
Reason: catch attention and create awareness
In this case, as we are doing fund rise for Breast Cancer Association, we use a slogan
related to breast:
“ BUY BREADS FOR BREAST”
This slogan accidently thought and is quite appropriate for promoting our breads.
Attention being caught successfully and opportunities are there of persuading people to
support our charity drive.
Second promotion plan: Approaching method
Reason: persuasive people to support us
People seldom come and approach themselves to the booth to buy breads. If we were
one of the passers-by, we would do the same thing like walking by without taking a
look on what’s on sale. This is a common attitude of what people would practice when
come to something that they did not like. Why they would not like it, as they still not
yet understand what’s going on and why is it happened. Therefore, approaching
method is practiced. A box is carried around the campus and asking around the
students whether to support us or not. Besides, we also tried to approach to the offices
of each academic department or admission office. We did approach a lot and it leads to
a flying colours of sale result and hit the target.
Figure 1 photo of Pinky Chan carrying
box to approach students
Figure 2 photo of Benny Tan preparing
to approach students
12. Sponsorship
Sponsorships are very important during the whole course of the charity drive. The
sponsors support greatly in term of our expenses. The relationship between our
sponsors for the charity drive that we ran is a mutualism, two way relationship. The
sponsors provide the funds and help off with our cost and expense while we help them
to promote their companies in a low cost marketing way to help the sponsors to get
expose to the crowd.
Target
Reason to approach
How we approached
F&N
Beverages
Marketing
Big company
E-mail
Calls
Foto Data
Group
Offers great deal
with polaroid’s
films
Calls
E-mail
Walk in
Tong Kee
bread & tarts
Famous bakery
shop
To get sponsored
in term of
breads/ cost price
for breads.
Walk in
E-mail
Feedback
Rejected, reason
being the charity
drive event is too
small.
Accepted.
Provide
Polaroid’s
films in a
cheaper
price.
Rejected, no
reason provided.
13. RT Pastry
House
Famous bakery
shop
Close to campus
To get sponsored
in term of
breads/ cost price
for breads.
Walk in
E-mail
Rejected, couldn’t
provide that big
amount of breads
for every morning in
time.
Free Mori
Famous bakery
shop
Close to campus
To get sponsored
in term of
breads/ cost price
for breads.
Supportive
Last Resort
Walk in
E-mail
Calls
Accepted.
Selling
breads and
cookies for us
at the cost
price.
Walk in
Accepted.
Each
member’s
parents is
sponsoring
RM51 to
support our
earlier
expenses.
Individuals
(Parents)
14. DISTRIBUTION
Products
So as to sell off our products during the presale and charity drive, first thing that we
need to do is to get those products from our suppliers. We have two suppliers that
were supplying products to us during the whole course of charity drive, one is Free Mori
Bakery that supplies us the breads and cookies and another one is FotoData Group who
supplies us the films. So the locations date that we went over there was as below:
Free Mori Bakery (By own transport)
Location: No 76, Ground Floor,, Jalan ss15/4D, 46500 Subang Jaya, Selangor, Malaysia.
Dates: 5/2/14~7/2/14, 9/2/14~14/2/14
Time: Around 8 in the morning
Foto Data Group (By Own Transport)
Location:
Dates: 9/2/14
Time: Around 11 in the morning
Breads and Cookies to Polaroid Films comparison
Breads and
Pastry
Differences
Polaroid Films
600+ over the course of
charity drive event
Quantity
28 packs (10 films per pack)
High
Demand
Low
Very Fast
How Fast Could we
Sell them off
Very Slow
15. Customers
After getting the products from the suppliers, we then sold them off to the customers.
Our targeted customers were mainly students and staffs at the campuses. Different
products have different property when it comes to selling them off.
Effectiveness
The success rate of selling breads/cookies over customers rate is almost 4/10 which
means out of 10 people that we approached usually there will be 4 people will buy from
us.
While the success rate of selling the Polaroid film is almost 1/100 which means out of a
hundred people, there will be only a person will but the films from us.
We also did go over to different places to sell when the sales decline during the 3rd day
of charity drive. We went to Sunway University College and Inti University College to
boost up the sales, and it was very efficient as therearen’t any charity drive events
running over at the two places.
16. GREEN MEASURES
Nowadays, green measure is important in business since it has several advantages. The
advantages are reduces waste and utility costs, improves system and equipment
performance, attracts environmentally conscious customer, provides a safer working
environment and etc.
Our products are breads and Polaroid from the supplier Free Mori Bakery and FotoData
Group respectively and all of them are made in environmentally conscious manner. We
run the business without plastic bag, water and electric usage to reduce the hazardous
effect. Furthermore, carton used for carrying the bread has been sent to recycle.
Packaging
Environmental Friendly
Minimal Waste
Carbon Footprint Reduction
Management of product
wastes
The packaging of breads is plastic bag with
sealer to keep it fresh. Carton which able to
recycle is used to carry the breads.
Plastic bag and carton both are able to recycle.
The carton is sent to recycle after using.
Donate to passerby.
17. JOB DISTRIBUTION
Before the charity drive
Group Members
Woo Wen Jian
Benny Tan Shiowee
Macy Khor Seem Leng
Chan Pin Qi
Job Distributed
Finding sponsor and supplier
Collecting products from
supplier
Pre-sale the products
Finding sponsor and supplier
Pre-sale the products
Set the sale price and
determine the profit
Finding sponsor and supplier
Pre-sale the products
Think of strategy in managing
sale
Contacting the polaroid
supplier
Finding sponsor and supplier
Collecting products from
supplier
Pre-sale the products
Contact the supplier
Card designer
During the charity drive
Group Members
Woo Wen Jian
Benny Tan Shiowee
Job Distributed
Collect products from suppliers
Set up booth
Approaching the customers by
going around the campus
Set up booth
Manage the money
Set the promotion price
18. Macy Khor Seem Leng
Managing the sale
Mange the booth
Help in taking polaroid
Chan Pin Qi
Collect products from suppliers
Approaching the customers by
going around the campus
Decorate the booth
After the charity drive (Business Report job distribution)
Group Members
Woo Wen Jian
Job Distributed
Sponsorship
Who are you approached to
Why u targets them?
In what form they sponsor you
How u approached them?
Distribution
How u get the product to your
sales location
How quickly can you deliver
the products (do they need to
it?)
How many customers can u
reach effectively?
Can your customer order your
product via online? Via phone?
Benny Tan Shiowee
Evaluation of result.
-Result of and the end
-Profit less profit
Right and wrong
If we do one more time, what
would you do differently?
Everyone needs to produce a
40s reflection
Green measures
Are your products made in an
environmentally conscious
19. manner? How can
You reduce the hazardous
effects?
- Is the product
packaging
environmentally
friendly?
-Minimal waste created
/packaging/recycle?
-How do you reduce carbon
footprint during the
distribution stage
-How are the product wastes
managed after use.
2) Pricing
Product selling price, product
cost price, is they popular or
attractive? (If they are, reason
why they are sold more
expensive.)
Strategies used when having
difficulty selling them
What if you are selling them
faster than expected?
3) Appendix
Receipts (write down all the
breads, not more than 5
breads each time), payments
to suppliers, photocopied
cheque, and receipt from
charity organization.
Macy Khor Seem Leng
Executive report (summary)
summary of the key point of
whole report
Objectives:
The chosen organization to
donate, reason behind,
Quantifiable objective, (target
donation/ target sales)
Target market
20. Who are the customer, their
background, their wants and
needs, their spending power?
3) Product and packaging
Products: what are they
selling? Short description for
each product and
Services. Features and
benefits.(why customers like
it)
Packaging
How are they packaged, will it
attract the customers, why so?
Include
Photos of product and
packaging in report
Chan Pin Qi
Competitors analysis
Who are they what are they
selling?
What are the strength and
vulnerabilities
Why would their customer buy
from them?
Promotion
Detail plan of the promotion
strategies
Tools used
Main marketing message
The message that you're
advocating
2 main tools for promoting
Reason to choose those tools
and strategies
(Include footage of actual
charity drive event)
Human resource
Roles and job responsibilities
(Project manager, sales
21. executive, accountants,
marketing and advertising
executives)
Each of the members what
they do
How to coordinate them as a
team
Describe organization
structure.
ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES
Chairman
Mr Chang Jao Ho
Group Leader
Woo Wen Jian
Creative
manager
Woo Wen Jian
Sales &marketing
manager
Macy Khor
Accountant
Benny Tan
Human resource
manager
Chan Pin Qi
22. EVALUATION OF RESULT
Everything that began must have ended in some way. The charity drive event came to
an end after having 3 days of presales and 5 days of actual sales during the charity
drive event. The end result of the 8 days of charity sales is as below:
Criteria
Results
Total Item Sold
610 of breads sold
79numbers of Cookies(packet)
sold
24 packs of polaroid film sold
14 of polaroid photos were
taken along with cards
Total item that were left unsold
11 of cookies
4 of polaroid per box
Total cost spent
RM2169.30
Total money earned(both sales and
donations) during event
RM1810
Total Money received from sponsor
RM204
Total money donated to the Charity
RM2014
Small conclusion, we earned quite a lot of profit from selling of the breads and cookies
products. While lost from selling of the polaroids products.
23. Right & Wrong
Along this event, we learnt that we need to make decision from time to time in order to
boost up our business. There will be rights and wrongs when we were making all these
decisions.
Right
Criteria
Reason
Selling of breads and cookies
products
They were fast seller and the demands over food
were pretty high during morning period and tea
time period
Getting over to other location such
as Sunway University campus and
Inti University campus to sell off
our products
The students in those campuses were not
irritated by the charity drive event unlike the
students in Taylor’s Lakeside University campus.
Selling off the breads at a cheaper
price after 3pm
As a promotion to sell off our breads product for
every day before it reached its expiry date.
Choosing breast cancer organization The organization is in need of a lot of helps in
to as the charity organization target term of physical helps as well as in term of
funds.
24. Wrong
Criteria
Reason
Selling off polaroidu products and
valentines/friendship cards
Time consuming for the preparation of
valentines/friendship card and the demands over
them are very low.
If we could run such thing again in the future, we probably would select products that
were easily sold off to the customers with high demands. Next, picking up a venue to
sell is very crucial too, staying at one place for too long will bring no good. Lastly, we
would emphasize on teamwork as well as teamwork is one of the important thing
because having a good teamwork will makes everything run even more smoothly.