BM461: Analyzing UK Consumer Confidence & Providing Start-up Advice

This report analyzes the global business environment, focusing on UK consumer confidence and providing start-up advice. It includes a newspaper article examining the impact of Coronavirus on the UK economy and identifies business sectors likely to prosper or struggle based on consumer confidence data. Investment suggestions are provided for amateur investors. The report also features an email message offering guidance to a friend starting a business importing mobile phones, discussing legal structures like sole proprietorship, partnership, and limited liability companies, along with their advantages and disadvantages. The analysis emphasizes the importance of understanding the global business environment for effective decision-making and business performance.

Global business
environment

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................3
Coursework 2a.................................................................................................................................3
Newspaper article.........................................................................................................................3
Coursework 2b.................................................................................................................................5
E-mail Message............................................................................................................................5
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................7
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................9

INTRODUCTION
The global business environment embraces worldwide, broad environmental factors
which are far from the control or scope of any nation or community. The process can be referred
to the environment within distinct nations along with external factors to the organisational
environment that influences the decision-making regarding the use of resources as well as
capabilities. Businesses are highly influenced by the global environment, that refers to the
uncontrollable international or local connections that impacts how an organisation operates
(Biloshapka and Osiyevskyy, 2018). This report includes two tasks in which the first task is
about a newspaper article which is written for a well-business based on the topic Consumer
Confidence. Another task of this report is about the writing of an e-mail message to a friend who
is thinking to start its own business.
MAIN BODY
Coursework 2a
Newspaper article
This section is related to the newspaper article that examines the latest UK Consumer
Confidence data. The article on topic Consumer Confidence is taken from The Financial Times
which is a newspaper. The chosen aspect on which the article is going to be written is
Coronavirus and its impact on economy.
The pandemic situation of Coronavirus has greatly affected the economy and businesses
in many ways. Restrictions regarding shutting down of businesses because of economic
lockdown has highly influenced the business operations. Limitations on mobility is also a cause
of pandemic situation of Coronavirus that greatly impact the economy. The magnitude of the
recession that is caused by the pandemic situation is unprecedented in the modern era. GDP has
reduced by 9.7% in the year 2020, the steepest drop since the consistent records started in 1948
and became equal to the decline in the year 1921 on unofficial estimates (Brondoni, 2018).
During the first economic lockdown, the GDP of UK was lowered by 25% in the month of April
2020 than it was only two months before February (Consumer Confidence, 2021). The economic
activities picked up over the spring season and summer season of the year 2020 and reflecting
the reopening of the economy of country. The main reason behind it was the rise in the cases of
COVID-19 and further economic lockdowns during the season of autumn and winter. It resulted

in the falling of economic activities again and a down turn in many businesses. The diminishing
GDP of UK was however much less severe in comparison to the first lockdown because at that
time consumers as well as businesses had adapted over the past year. Then there was a strong
recovery in the spring season of 2021 which resulted to a rebound in the GDP of UK, although,
the growth has slowed down in the season of summer as well as autumn. Just like of October
2021, GDP of the country was still 0.5% less in comparison to the situation of before the
pandemic.
The pandemic situation of Coronavirus has greatly impacted many different sectors of the
economy at various degrees (Cohen, 2018). The sectors that dependent on the social interactions
such as hospitality as well as entertainment sectors have been peculiarly badly hit by the effect of
pandemic situation. Some of the sectors especially those which are providing financial services
have fared relatively better in comparison to the other. Government and political system of the
country has introduced the policies around the world which were formulated for the mitigation of
at least some of the unfavourable economic influences that came from the pandemic situation of
COVID-19. Within the United Kingdom, a huge number of policies have been announced by the
Government of the country and the Bank of England which is the Central bank of the UK for
supporting the businesses as well as manpower. These different measures intend to keep the
organisations afloat and as many people as possible got the job opportunities. They involved the
financial support for businesses, human resources as well as the large number of the public
during the pandemic situation along with attempting to decline the uncertainty of the economy
(Dinçer, Yüksel and Adalı, 2019). The UK's public finances have been highly influenced by the
economic shock of the pandemic situation of the Coronavirus. The budget deficit of the
Government has been reached a peacetime record in the year 2020-21 because at that time the
government spendings increased and the tax revenue fell to a lesser extent. The package of the
UK Government for supporting the businesses, public services and households is costing
approximately £315 billions. The combined influence of demand and supply shocks, the higher
degree of the uncertainty and the intense public health considerations create it an unprecedented
economic shock in the modern era. The effect of the pandemic situation of COVID-19 relied on
the virus and how much damages that are permanent causes to the economy (Moşteanu, Faccia
and Cavaliere, 2020). On the recovery of the economy, the spendings done by the government to
support the businesses as well as households are falling and the receipts of tax are increasing.

The Chancellor announced that the increase in the tax will bring future deficits down further. The
OBR forecasts that the budget deficit will fall over the upcoming years because the the spendings
of the government related to Virus ends and as economic activities increase (Rialp-Criado and
Komochkova, 2017). They do, however, presumes that there will be some long-term damages in
the economy.
Coursework 2b
E-mail Message
This section is about the e-mail message that is going to be written to a friend whio is
thinking of to start its own business. The initial idea of the business is to import the cheap mobile
phones from Taiwan or China and sell them to the rural investors within the emerging economies
who need mobile business communications which is cheap as well as reliable for the purpose of
growing their own business (Saeed and et.al, 2018). The e-mail message is created as below:
To
Cc
Bcc
Subject
Dear friend,
I am fine here and hope you will be same there. I am so glad to know the idea of your
starting a business of import of cheap mobile from Taiwan or China. This is very nice idea and
is an emerging concept in the modern era. You know nowadays individual is preferring to use
cheap mobiles instead of using expensive one so its preferences are shifting towards the cheap
products. This kind of business will be beneficial for you and from this, you can earn and
maximise the level of profits that will be occurred in the business. There are different legal
structures for a business and you also need to be aware of them. After starting your business,
you should design an appropriate legal framework that evaluates the legal background of
Taiwan or China as well as its policies regarding the export and import. After that you should
design your business policies that are associated with the exports and imports. Because if
Taiwan's business policies would not be adhere then you might suffer loss within your business.
I am also having an understanding of the different legal structures and the pros and cons that are

concerned with them. So I would also like to share those pros and cons with you so that you can
better understand about the legal structures and which should be best for your business.
Different types of legal structures are sole proprietorship, partnership, limited company, limited
liability company, public limited company, corporations and many more. There are some
advantages and disadvantages that are associated with sole proprietorship. Within such type of
business, the owner receives all the profits and the earnings are taxed only once. The owner of
the business makes all decisions in this type of legal structure and it is considered as an easiest
as well as least expensive form of the ownership to organise. But this kind of legal structure has
some drawbacks also which I think you should know them. In this business, the liability is
unlimited as if anything happens within the business then only will be liable for it and your
personal assets might also be at risk. This type of legal structure has no separate legal status
and is limited in raising the funds. Another kind of legal structure is partnership in which you
have to work with one more another person and you both will be the owners of the business.
This type of business is easy to set with the exception of developing a partnership agreement
and has separate legal status to give liability protection along with it, the profits are taxed only
once in this business. The main disadvantages of this kind of business is that the you and your
partner are jointly and individually responsible for the actions of the others and the profits must
be shared with your partner also. There is other legal structure also which is limited liability
company and the formation of this type of business is more complex as well as formal than that
of a general partnership. In this kind of business, you have to file legal paperwork and it is the
advantage of this kind of this business that it has a separate legal entity and there are unlimited
number of owners. However, there are some limitations also of this type of business as it can be
costly to establish, personal tax liability, yearly administrative costs and legal as well as
accounting assistance is also recommended in this kind of legal structure. But for your business,
I would like to suggest you to go with sole proprietorship as in this kind of business the profits
earned by you will be all yours and you can shape your business according to your choice. You
must also evaluate the competition level within the market to establish your business.
Competitive advantage is measured with market prices and you can also use the model of
Herfindahl-Hirschman Index which is used to measure the market concentration. You can also
frame the effective marketing strategies in your business such as providing discounts and perks
on your product and many more. By keeping in mind all these aspects you can introduce better

business within the market-place. I wish you all the luck and success for starting your new
business.
CONCLUSION
From above explanation of the report, it has been analysed that analysing the global
business environment is essential for a business. It helps in making better business decisions by
ascertaining the impact of factors that are associated with global business environment which
influence the performance of business. This report is based on two tasks in which the first task
explained the newspaper article on the topic coronavirus and its impact on economy and in
second task an e-mail message has been written in the report to a friend who is going to start its
business of import with Taiwan or China. In this part, some advantages and disadvantages of
different legal structures has been discussed that helps in operating the business in an effective as
well as efficient manner.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Biloshapka, V. and Osiyevskyy, O., 2018. Three value-focused strategic questions for
continuously updating your business model. Strategy & Leadership.
Brondoni, S. M., 2018. Competitive Business Management and Global Competition. An
Introduction. In Competitive Business Management (pp. 21-42). Routledge.
Cohen, R. B., 2018. The new international division of labor, multinational corporations and
urban hierarchy (pp. 287-315). Routledge.
Dinçer, H., Yüksel, S. and Adalı, Z., 2019. Economic effects in Islamic stock development of the
European countries: Policy recommendations for ethical behaviors. In Handbook of
research on managerial thinking in global business economics (pp. 58-78). IGI Global.
Moşteanu, N. R., Faccia, A. and Cavaliere, L. P. L., 2020, August. Digitalization and green
economy-changes of business perspectives. In Proceedings of the 2020 4th
International Conference on Cloud and Big Data Computing (pp. 108-112).
Rialp-Criado, A. and Komochkova, K., 2017. Innovation strategy and export intensity of Chinese
SMEs: The moderating role of the home-country business environment. Asian Business
& Management. 16(3). pp.158-186.
Saeed and et.al, 2018. Millennials Motivation Factors and Job Retention: An Evidence from Oil
and Gas Company in Malaysia. Global Business & Management Research. 10(3).
Online
Consumer Confidence, 2021[Online]Available
through:<https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-8866/>