Small Business Dynamics: Chic by Choice

Introduction

Small business is a privately-owned organisation, partnership or the sole proprietorship business and Small Corporation that consists of less number of staffs and the less annual profit as well as less turnover. On the other hand, entrepreneurship can be referred to as launching, designing and starting a new venture which is small at the initial stage. This report is going to discuss the feature of small business. It will discuss the issue faced by the UK based SME business Chic by Choice, which provides customers as highly trustworthy market place of getting the rented clothes. This SME offers customers clothes of 40 brands and designers which assist them to get these clothes on affordable rent. This report will also critically compare and contrast the standard marketing theory, in order to discuss how Chic By Choice would use the specific marketing approaches in order in order to make strong customer base as well as good market reputation in the national and international market. Finally, the report will make proper justification of using appropriate marketing tools within operation framework.

Analyse feature of small business marketing environment:

Small business is influenced by both the internal and external marketing environment. According to Barbero et al. (2014), external marketing environmental factors that influence the small business such as social, political, legal, economic, and technological and environmental factors. On the other hand, the internal environmental factors of small business are its own strength, weakness, opportunities in the local market and threats.

Features of the external environment of small business:

Although Chic By Choice has less fund which confined its marketing boundaries into the local market, rather than stepping into the international market, there six major external environmental factors residing into the local market that affect the overall business decision and marketing approaches of small business (Aparicio et al. 2016). Following are the important feature of the political, social, legal, technical, environmental and economic factors in the UK based local market that poses an important impact on the operation of Chic By Choice operating in the UK.

Feature of the internal environment of small business:

When it comes to discussing the feature of the internal environment of small business, it is important to analyse the important internal resources of an organisation such as strength, weakness, opportunities and the threats (Guerrero et al. 2015). Chic by Choice deals with the following internal environmental factors which pose a potential impact on their overall marketing policies and decisions.

Identify key marketing operational issues faced by small business and new venture:

In order to launch a new business or venture the business owner can face several potential challenges which are as follows:

Lack of resources:

In order to start a small venture, lack of resources is one of the common operation issues that proprietor and marketers of Chic by Choice face. As stated by Roig-Tierno et al. (2015), owners of small business face a lack of budget, time and staffs in order to operate their business in a well-organised manner. In most of the time, Chic By Choice is unable to pay their bill within deadline such as delayed invoicing. Lack of proper cash flow into the business makes the owners unable to hire more staffs into the workplace which affect overall, the productivity of the organisation. Moreover, Chic by Choice needs to set their market goals, strategies and operation process within the limited time in order to deal with the ever-increasing number of competitions in the market. However, due to lack of staffs and budget, the time management is not possible for small business owners.

Time management:

Managing proper time during marketing operation is entirely based on the manpower ad high-skilled workforces (Rauch and Hulsink, 2015). However, Chic By Choice is unable to offer attractive salary packages to high skilled staffs as per the market standard, which makes them unable to have sufficient staffs. Therefore, the new ventures are unable to complete their market projects within the preset deadlines.

Government regulation:

In order to operate the marketing operation in the new venture, the owners need to comply with governmental regulation and trade policies which pose potential barriers on the marketing decision and operation of the venture (Urbano and Aparicio, 2016). Moreover different policies such as employment policy, wage act, pollution acts, Waste management policies and product packaging, as well as labelling standard, pose several challenges on marketers of Chic by Choice. The owners of Chic by Choice have to reset their policies and marketing operational structure in order to comply with government regulation in order to make the business sustainable.

Taxation:

Income tax, trade tax, tariffs and goods and service tax, imposed on the owners of Chic By Choice pose a huge impact on overall marketing operation. In this aspect, the changing government, policies and taxation rules compel the marketers to make proper changes in their marketing policies and operation in order to maintain sustainability in business.

Responding to the competition:

Due to the economic and social support of government to the establishment of small and medium ventures, there are huge numbers of small ventures in the UK as well as across the world (Zahra, 2015). This raises the competitive threats for Chic by Choice. In this aspect, the existing small business that is well-known in the local market poses a high level of completive threats to the new ventures.

Critical comparison and contrast of standard marketing theory:

Standard marketing theory represents the 7 factors that affect the basic success and progress of the marketing process (Urbano and Aparicio, 2016). The seven elements of marketing are product, promotion, price, packaging, place and positioning.

Product:

Chic by Choice needs to focus more on its product development process in order to offer high-quality products or service to their customers. As stated by Glaeser et al. (2015), products of small business would be based on current market preference and consumer's buying behaviours. Chic by Choice marketers need to make proper researcher on the current product's preference in the local and international market before launching the products. On the contrary, Drucker (2014) argued that for small business, it is not all time possible to conduct research on current trend due to lack of budget, rather the marketers need to focus on the local market trend in order to understand the exact demand of customers.

Price

As stated by Fuentelsazet al. (2015), the pricing strategy of small business needs to be based on the current market standard which will assist the marketers to set a trustworthy relationship with customers. Chic by Choice owners need to set a justified and reasonable price for each product that will allow the local consumers to buy the product or service easily. On the contrary, Drucker (2014) argued that, sometimes, small business owners need to set a slightly higher price for each product due to make the extra profit for maintaining the sustainability of their business. However, it can provide the customer to spend their money into the other marketers to get h similar product at fewer prices.

Promotion:

Promotion is important for small business owners or entrepreneurs in order to make awareness about the new venture in front of local people (Fuentelsazet al. (2015). The promotional and advertising process for Chic by Choice would be budget friendly and highly useful in order to attract the local as well as international customers. On the contrary Aparicio et al. (2016), promotional events and advertisement sometimes increase the overall manufacturing cost of small business. In this aspect, Chic by Choice owners need to focus on the overall manufacturing cost and the brand awareness of their products and service in order to maintain the sustainability of their business.

Place:

In order to launch a small business venture, the owners need to choose the appropriate place in which products should be sold and distributed (Barbero et al. 2014). In this case, Chic by Choice owners would select the place in such a manner that customer can easily reach there. On the contrary Fuentelsaz et al. (2015) argued that sometimes selecting a place which can be easily accessible by the customer can selling and distribution channel of business due to the higher economic value of the selected place. In this aspect, Chic By Choice needs to focus on their budget and overall economic status in order to ensure that the place that is going be selected for the small business would be appropriate in approaching in the huge number of customers.

People:

When it comes to launching a new small business, it is important to consider the manpower and high skilled staffs of that organisation (Glaeser et al. 2015). Chic By Choice owners need to maintain strong coordination and collaboration with all its staffs, salespersons, suppliers, dealers and, marketers to build strong marketing framework

Process:

Chic By Choice owners would maintain the high standard in each delivery process. Through the implementation of digital technologies, small business cans improve the delivery process which can save time as well as money by increasing the efficiency.

Justifying the appropriate marketing tool within the operation framework:

There are different appropriate market tools that can use by the small business which are as follows

Social media marketing:

This is one of the most relevant marketing tools for Chic By Choice which will assist the marketers to connect with more people in the national and international field. As stated by Glaeser et al. (2015) social media marketing is highly relevant to today's marking trend. Through posting videos, images and stories of products and services, Chic by Choice can easily inform a large number of people about their brand.

Blogging:

Through blogging, marketers of Chic by Choice can easily represent their product, service and brand image, moral and ethical aspects of business in front of customers (Guerrero et al. 2015). This is one of the appropriate and relevant tools for Chic by Choice in which small business owners can connect to customer in less time and limited budget.

Marketing automation:

Automation of the marketing operation assists all the staffs of small business to deal with each task inefficient manner (Mason and Brown, 2014). As stated by automation makes the production, manufacturing and selling process faster which assist the customer to get the product and service on time. Moreover, the marketing automation would assist the organisational staffs of Chic by Choice to conduct proper risk assessment framework in order to deal with the current market trend and customer demand.

Conclusion:

From the above-mentioned discussion, it can be concluded that small business is the business which is started with a limited number if staffs and less budget. Small, business owners have potential impacts of the external and internal environmental factors. External environment factors such as social, political, legal, and economic and environmental aspects pose a potential impact on overall marketing operation of small business. On the other internal environmental factors such as strength, weakness, opportunities and threats of the organisation, would also influence the marketing decision mad operation policies. Therefore, small business owners need to consider the seven marketing elements in order to maintain the sustainability of their business.

Reference list:

Drucker, P., 2014. Innovation and entrepreneurship. 2nd Eds, London: Routledge.