BSc Business Management: BUS113 Crafting Your Future Portfolio

This professional portfolio delves into various aspects of professional development, beginning with an analysis of the retail industry using Porter's Five Forces and PEST analysis. It explores the impact of digital trends, modern marketing, and evolving customer expectations on the retail sector. Furthermore, the portfolio examines ethical leadership, emphasizing communication, decision-making, fairness, and knowledge. A significant portion is dedicated to reflective practice, utilizing Gibbs' reflective model to assess personal strengths and weaknesses, particularly in the context of a challenging project related to retail strategy. The reflection highlights the importance of communication skills and time management. Desklib provides access to similar solved assignments and resources for students.

Crafting for your future

TABLE OF CONTENTS
ELEMENT 1....................................................................................................................................3
(a)................................................................................................................................................3
(b)................................................................................................................................................3
(c)................................................................................................................................................4
ELEMENT 2....................................................................................................................................6
(a)................................................................................................................................................6
(b)................................................................................................................................................7
(c)................................................................................................................................................8
(d)................................................................................................................................................8
(e)................................................................................................................................................9
ELEMENT 3....................................................................................................................................9
(a)................................................................................................................................................9
(b)..............................................................................................................................................10
(c)..............................................................................................................................................11
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................13

ELEMENT 1
(a)
Retail industry is one of the most popular industry among all the sectors because it is the
part of transportation, trade and other services too. Due to the entry of new players in the market,
this industry is known as most dynamic industry in the world. This industry encompasses all
kinds of grocery shops, supermarket, large departmental stores. Along with this retail sector also
includes online business and online order which means customers can purchase online through
internet, websites and mobile application and pay online for their purchase. Retail industry
majorly run with the help of supply chain management method, where retailer sells products or
services directly to the ultimate clients. Customer purchase the products or services for personal
use to satisfy their basic to luxurious needs. The retail industry is focusing on target market and
classified their customer base into various categories. This process is known as segmentation,
targeting and positioning where company target audience as per their needs, choice, trends, age
and wants. Due to heavy competition in this field, people are more focused on selling their
products and services to customers as per their convenience such physical stores and online
shopping.
(b)
Porter’s five forces model- this method is used by retail company to determine the industry
attractiveness and analyse the prospects of opportunities and growth. This will help them to
assess the competitive advantages and market trends. Along with this it will be helpful to assess
the competition rivalry and industry performance and potential. This tool is used to provide key
highlights to the company for crafting short term and long term strategic and important plans for
the business.
Threat of new market players/ competitors
This is the most important factor as per Michael porter model which will decide the
attractiveness of the retail sector. Due to heavy competition in this field, the existing market
players may impose barriers to new companies. These barriers may include infrastructure,
innovation, new technology, supply chain method and distribution channels. This can also be
imposed by gaining low-cost leadership and also trade and policies barriers. Moreover, the threat

to the new company could be from the strong loyalty of clients towards products, their buying
behaviour, differentiation of goods or services.
Threat of substitute products- Due to heavy competition in retail sector, the major factor
that will definitely affect the attractiveness and performance of the company is existence of
substitutes. This is just because substitutes products directly impact the price, demand and
supply, thus the threat of substitute is very high in this competitive market (Almeida and Santos,
2018). According to market research, customers will get more options and availability of
products in order to satisfy their needs they will purchase from the available alternatives for
satisfying their needs. The buying behaviour and willingness is totally dependent on factors like
price, trend, quality and performance of the goods.
Power of suppliers- suppliers play an important role in the supply chain method because
they supply the required inputs or raw material to the new players of the market and existing
market players. If the quality of goods is unique and maintaining differentiation strategy, then
suppliers bargaining behaviour is high.
Power of customers- customers can be public, firms, distributors, retailers and anyone
who are the purchasers of the retail industry goods. If the scope for switching from one supplier
to another exists in this competitive market, then bargaining power of customers is high.
Industry rivalry- There are many factors that may affected the intensity of competitive
rivalry in retail industry such as gaining a competitive advantage by achieving economies of
scale, loyalty of audience, different varieties and unique products offered in for maximizing the
satisfaction of clients.
PEST analysis
Political factors- due to policies and rules made by government, the retail industry has to
face a lot of challenges, such laws can affect the revenue, market position and business growth of
the company it can be positive or negative (Perera, 2017). For example- if the government
increase sales taxes and regulation on trade then it would affect the product price. Thus,
customers would buy products by identifying various substitute options and become picky in
their products selection. This will ultimately impact the total sales, productivity and performance
of the business.
Economic factors- These factors include economic growth, exchange rates,
unemployment rates etc. During pandemic many people lost their jobs, so government has taken

major steps to appreciate the industry for providing employment. This support of government has
positively impacted the business operations in the world.
Social factors- Nowadays, people are more concerned about health and fitness so, they
start using healthy food items and eco-friendly products. Company needs to focus on these
factors and maintain stability in the competitive market by providing them goods as per their
preferences. Therefore, it is said that social trends improve the shopping behaviour of customers
and attitudes. For example- whenever a client’s visits the physical store of retail industry, they
would pick products as per their choice and demographic social factors which includes income
level, education level and gender.
Technological factors- In today’s business environment, technology and innovation has
influenced the shopping activity of the customers. So, business world are more focusing on
adopting new strategies, methods, tools and techniques to keep moving with modern time. Retail
industries are the ones that benefited from the technological factors such as online payment
method, hardware, software and fastest home delivery. For example- companies are now able to
advertise their brand name and products or services globally with the help of government
support, internet and Wi-Fi, without any restrictions.
By evaluating the study, it has been noted that if the company follow policies and rules of
a country which is generally made by government, then it’s good for their business success.
Otherwise, it would have impacted the business activities and end up in a lot of legal penalties.
There has been increasing trends and changes in varieties of things which has influence
the customer purchasing power and behaviour. Due to heavy competition in technological world,
adopting infrastructure and digital marketing. Retail industry use a variety of technology items in
their business activities. In today’s business environment, people are focusing on adopting new
systems, such as high speed internet, Wi-Fi, 5G and many more. Moreover, there is an increasing
trend in retail shops where owners offer food products such as vegan, organic food, gluten free
and healthy food.
(c)
(1)
Digital world- nowadays, customer behaviour and trends such as latest technology and
digitalization impact the sales of products. Customers purchasing behaviour is changing quickly

because of growth and development of e-commerce and artificial intelligence. So, it is important
for company to adopt this opportunity to attract new clients and satisfy existing customers.
Modern marketing- retail business have endless options of modern marketing in order to
attract customers which helps scale up their market position. Business owners needs to
understand exactly what modern marketing is used by different company. For best results, look
for marketing strategy that is specifically designed for retail industry.
Evolving customer expectations- retail industry needs to be aware about seasonal trends
and sudden changes in technology, customer behaviour, political factors, shopping trends and
others. The most effective way to keep customer expectations satisfied is to always strive for
innovative ideas.
Customer base- nowadays, customer is more concern about quality, price and demand of
products in the market. By providing special offers, discount and promotions trends company
have opportunities to grow their business and attract more customers. Nowadays, retail industry
is more focused on maintaining communications with their clients to keep them loyal to brand.
(2)
An ethical leadership is all about behaviour of leaders according to set values for
themselves and employees. A good leadership is holding respect for each and every person and
lead them direction or right path to achieve goals. Ethical leaders are motivated, passionate,
providing training to employees and maintain collaborations within the team. To be successful
leader, one should have communication skills, time management skills, improving team morale,
honestly and respect for others.
Communication skills- An effective leader should communicate openly with their team
members, this will create bond between them and increase performance at individual level.
Decision making process- with the help of effective communication skills leaders can
manage different skills also which will help them to make strategic and important decisions.
Fairness- it is important to treat everyone equally in the company, offer them
opportunities like task, complete project with team, no favouritism. To motivate people one
should not play favourite in the firm otherwise it will affect team morale negatively.
Trust and honesty- a good leader must commit to employees and fulfil that commitment such as
delegating responsibilities and roles, playing fair with employees and coordinating honestly
without doing any partiality.

Knowledge- leaders needs to have deep knowledge about the company’s activities,
operations and what more improvement is needed.
Inspire others- leaders of the company should inspire employees to behave ethically and
work as a team to achieve common goals (Siangchokyoo, Klinge and Campion, 2020). In this
way, they influence people in the firm, by providing them a set of actions and guidance towards
goals.
It is recommended to leaders that they should adopt transformational leadership so that
they can easily able to spot the gaps and issue in a vision statement and objectives which is
important for company’s performance. They should make necessary changes to solve problems
rapidly so that employees can do their work effectively. This leadership style make people feel
more encouraged and motivate so that they will do their work passionately.
To support this, (Irfan and et.al., 2019) has commented that leaders who uses their skills
and provide direction to their employees in different situation. In other words, it is most effective
leadership style one can use during their leadership act from situation to situation. For example-
retail industry is flexible in nature in every aspect, so if leaders uses this style it means they must
be using leadership skills depending on the business or market situation.
ELEMENT 2
(a)
Reflective practice is a systematic learning process used by teachers and students or any
people which allows them to make links from their experience. The main aims of reflective
practice are to make people aware about their professional skills and knowledge (Adeani,
Febriani and Syafryadin, 2020) The reflective practice process motivates people to work with
others in an effective way. Moreover, this practice makes sure that all the professionals, students
and teachers work more effectively and learn things. With the help of reflective practice, people
develop their ability to understand learning process and the best ways to guide people. By
evaluating this module, I have learned that reflective practice will develop abilities to solve
issues, improves time management in order to assess learning and teaching process. I have
always felt that reflective practice is one of the critical task until my feelings on this learning part
were pushed me to understand reflection. By using Gibbs reflective model which includes 6

stages description, feelings, evaluating, analysis, conclusion and action plan (Karnieli-Miller,
2020). It helps me to identify my strengths and areas for improvement and take action in order to
enhance my professional skills which is beneficial for my career.
My manager has given me task related to retail industry strategy, they said I need to
complete within this week only, so, I am getting nervous if I could complete this task on time or
not. During this study, I have learned that reflective practice acknowledges strengths and
recognise weaknesses so that proper action can be taken to be improved. Although, before I was
not good in reflecting things but now I can evaluate things in a proper way. However, while
doing task I was excited and felt more positive because of my key strength which is
communication skills, time management skills and writing skills, active listening skills.
After completing one of the part of my task, my manager paid me lots of compliments, this
has motivated me a lot. Although I did worry about this afterwards because some of my
weaknesses, which I think I need to improve such as nervousness about speaking in public,
sometimes impatience and I need to learn about how to take decisions on my own. On the plus
side, there was really positive environment at workplace, which helps me a lot during my task.
Although this task was time consuming as I need to collect important data and information with
the help of my seniors and managers. Speaking to my manager after the task, their positive
feedback helped me realized that my skills and knowledge allowed me to complete this project
effectively. Now, I am feeling really confident as a result of this positive experience and realised
that perfect things take time. For future, I could seek suggestion from experts how to improve or
overcome my weaknesses which will help me achieve my goals and increase self-confidence.
(b)
Group development- According to Belbin team roles model, it is said that team members
in the company needs to have varieties of strengths and weaknesses in order to complete their
task. If team mates of the company have same strengths the team work will be complete task
effectively. During this module, I have learned that team work is important for the company’s
performance in order to perform better than others. It creates encouragement among employees
and maintain coordination with the help of roles and responsibility.
Conflict management- According to Thomas kilmann’s theory of conflict used by many
professional to manage conflict between company’s employees. With the help of this model my
manager has effectively maintain bond between my team members (Conflict management styles,

2021). During this study, I have learned that to be good leaders or manager, one need to have
knowledge of conflict management. With the help of collaborating style, I have experienced that
it is helpful to identify a solution which will satisfy employees concerns. During accommodating
style, I have experienced that this should be adopted when relationship is important rather than
results or outcome.
(c)
Kolb learning style is important to learn about reflective practice in order to support
students, employees and professional learning and development. With the help of this model,
people can gain effective conclusions and ideas from previous experience (Mann and Walsh,
2017). the main aim of Kolb’s learning cycle is to take development and learning process into
different new experiences and complete the learning cycle. Firstly, I have learned that team work
is important to build collaboration between team mates. Having a good manager helps company
in achieve success and improve productivity. With the help of my skills, I have learned that
communication skills and active listening skills is really important for team building. In
reflective observation stage, I have experiences that my other team mates are adopting time
management skills to manage their task. In order to improve things which, I am lacking, I need to
read articles, handle team projects and attend workshops in order to find out cons and pros of
different techniques which will be helpful.
(d)
Communication is all about sharing ideas, point of view and important information and
understanding with others (Farrell, 2017). During this module, I have experience that without
communication, team collaboration cannot be maintained. So managers need to focus on
improving team coordination by giving them task and responsibility. I have learned that it will be
helpful in solving problems, reducing conflicts between team members and improve coordination
for task completion. Therefore, this should be done through Thomas kilmann’s model and Belbin
team roles model. This will ultimately helpful in improving personal development plan, which
can
(e)
With the help of this module, I have experienced that self-reflection help me to develop my
problem solving skills and find solutions in planning and organising things for behaviour change.

For future personal growth, I will have adopted various techniques to improve problem solving
skills and other areas of development. Moreover, when reflecting on own experience feel that it
is necessary to adopt gibbs and kolb model for managing relationships with people in company
one can increase learning and development.
ELEMENT 3
(a)
Personal analysis
Strengths Opportunities
 Communication skills- with the help of
this skills, I can easily create bond with
my team mates which is beneficial for
company’s performance.
 Time management skills- By evaluating
the study, it has been noted that time
management is necessary to complete
every task on time.
 Active listening skills- an effective
employees and leaders needs to adopt
these skills to maintain team weak.
 Writing skills
 By evaluating the report, it has been
noted that there are many opportunities
such as adopting new marketing
strategy, expanding knowledge level
about market trends.
 Providing various products availability
and options for customers, so that it
will be helpful for customer shopping
satisfaction.
Aspirations Results
 First of all, it is necessary to achieve
short term goals which is an open door
to achieve long term target. Short term
goals mean creating customer base by
providing them varieties of options for
products or services. Long term goals
include expanding business to different
countries in order to gain competitive
advantage.
 After creating short term goals and long
term goals notes and achieving them, it
is important to keep track on it. I will
collect feedback from customers about
their satisfaction level and employee
satisfaction.
 This will help me to achieve deep
knowledge about profitability and
performance at individual level.

 This is only possible with
communication skills and active
listening skills because for attracting
clients I need to take feedback from
them. This would provide me idea
about what more improvement is
needed to make necessary changes.
 With the help of key performance
indicators and benchmarking, one can
easily find out the performance and
position of business or at individual
level.
(b)
Setting goals
What do I want
to learn ?
what do I have
to do?
What support
and resources
will I need?
how will I
measure my
success?
Target date for
review of
results.
Need to deal
with impatience
nature
work on my
stress level
management
Workshops and
motivational
videos
I will complete a
weekly personal
reviews and
able to handle
current working
loads
1 months
Decision
making process
Will create
constructive and
positive
environment to
think wisely
Training and
development
classes
Will keep track
on daily
decisions and
what more
improvement is
needed
1.5 months
Discomfort
taking risks
sometimes
Seek out help or
advice from
experts such as
leaders and
supervisor.
Support from
leaders and my
supervisor
With the help of
my mentor now
I can deal with
this issues by
tracking my
progress every
2 months

week.
Nervousness Meditation and
exercise is the
best way to
handle this type
of situation
By making daily
assessments on
my own I can
track my level of
improvement.
Connectivity
and sharing what
you feel is
another way to
deal with such
weaknesses.
By reading
motivational
videos I can find
out my
improvement
level. I can see
improvement in
my self-
confidence.
3 months
(c)
Personal objectives
Short term goals (next six months)
 Short term goal is helpful to set up long term and medium term goals after getting some
experience one can easily achieve their big targets.
 A lack of patience can cause a lot of challenges for me in my personal and professional
work, so I need to focus on my patience level so, that I can make any important decision
in life easily.
 I need to learn how to take my own decision so, that it will increase self-confidence. This
will be helpful for my personal life and professional career in order balance between
impatience and patience factors.
Medium term goals ( next 2-3 years)
 Work on new skill which is helpful for my career such as leadership skills, professional
skills and some of hard skills such as basic knowledge of technology and completing
professional certificates.

 After improving leadership skills, need to get a promotion and become a manager of
team, Because now I can see myself dealing with different people.
Long term goals ( 3-5 years)
 My current long term goal is Expanding business in various locations in order to create
customer base and gain competitive advantages. So, I am looking forward to developing
my professional skills so that I can achieve position of top level management team head.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Adeani, I. S., Febriani, R. B. and Syafryadin, S., 2020. USING GIBBS’REFLECTIVE CYCLE
IN MAKING REFLECTIONS OF LITERARY ANALYSIS. Indonesian EFL
Journal. 6(2). pp.139-148.
Mann, S. and Walsh, S., 2017. Reflective practice in English language teaching: Research-based
principles and practices. Routledge.
Farrell, T. S., 2017. Research on reflective practice in TESOL. Routledge.
Karnieli-Miller, O., 2020. Reflective practice in the teaching of communication skills. Patient
education and counselling. 103(10). pp.2166-2172
Perera, R., 2017. The PESTLE analysis. Nerdynaut.
Almeida, F. and Santos, J. D., 2018. Annex I–Porter Five Forces.
Irfan, M. and et.al., 2019. Competitive assessment of Indian wind power industry: A five forces
model. Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy. 11(6). p.063301.
Siangchokyoo, N., Klinger, R. L. and Campion, E. D., 2020. Follower transformation as the
linchpin of transformational leadership theory: A systematic review and future research
agenda. The Leadership Quarterly. 31(1). p.101341.
Online
Conflict management styles. 2021. [Online]. Available through:
<https://www.waldenu.edu/news-and-events/walden-news/2017/0530-whats-your-conflict-
management-style>