INTERNATIONAL

A-LEVEL
BUSINESS
(9625) Paper BU02
Report on the examination
June 2022

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INTERNATIONAL A-LEVEL BUSINESS (9625) Paper BU02 Report on the examination

REPORT ON EXAMINATION: INTERNATIONAL A-LEVEL BUSINESS 9625

UNIT BU02 JUNE 2022
The overall level of knowledge and understanding demonstrated by students on this paper was good.
However, there were a greater number of students than usual who did not attempt questions. Application
to the context was weak; students spent a lot of time writing longer responses than needed which did not
apply to the context and could not reach higher levels. When students were able to apply their answers,
they made better supported judgements and accessed higher levels.

QUESTION 01
Students accessed this multiple choice question well with approximately 70% of them getting the correct
answer.

QUESTION 02
It was pleasing to see so many students were familiar with calculating break even . Over 70% of
students got this calculation question correct.

QUESTION 03
Students seemed to struggle with this question which tested how a business might account for a credit
payment on their cashflow. Only approximately 20% of students knew that the payment on credit would
be shown in the following month.

QUESTION 04
There was some confusion between public organisations and public limited companies in the answers to
this question. Unfortunately for those who thought a public sector organisation had shareholders and
focussed on profit, marks were limited. To gain full marks in these 3 mark questions, students need to
apply the question to the context. Only 20% managed to do this.

QUESTION 05
Half of the students showed knowledge of return on investment in the form of the calculation, with 35%
of all students able to use the information to work out the correct answer. Even if the final answer was
wrong students were able to gain marks for method which shows the importance of students showing
their workings.

QUESTION 06
Question 6 tested students on their ability to calculate percentage changes and use their answers to
calculate sales per employee. 85% of students were able to calculate sales per employee but only 65%
of those could calculate the percentage change. Marks were still given to those who could not work out
the new sales figure and so again, it is important that students attempt the question and show their
workings.

QUESTION 07
Most students had some knowledge of crowdfunding; where students gained full marks, they applied
their knowledge in the context of a start up business.

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QUESTION 08
This question was well answered with a high number of students able to explain the benefit of Just In
Time. Where students successfully applied this to a car manufacturer they gave some good context such
as parts being expensive to store.

QUESTION 09
Question 9 seemed to be the most accessible of the 9 mark questions. Stronger students recognised the
risk of increasing labour turnover in a competitive market, such as staff moving to a competitor. Where
students scored lower marks they did not consider the competitive market and how a high labour
turnover would impact on the competitiveness of the business.

QUESTION 10
This question seemed to challenge students the most out of all the questions in section B, mainly due to
students not applying their knowledge of budgets to the context of a hotel experiencing low demand.
Stronger students did this very well, for example suggesting that budgets would help the business to
identify which costs it could reduce over the winter or could help it in setting targets. However, many
responses were essentially a long list of general benefits of budgets and could only score at low levels.

QUESTION 11
It was pleasing to see a number of students applying the question to the context of the mobile phone
provider being the only provider and the impact that might have on customer satisfaction. Many students
recognised that this might not be favourable and were able to analyse the arguments. However, some
student responses lacked focus as they discussed the impact on profit rather than customer satisfaction.

QUESTION 12
This seemed to be the most accessible question of section C. The majority of students were able to
explain the benefits and drawbacks of replacing staff with technology. However, many students missed
out on higher marks by not applying this to the context of a bank. Where students did apply to the
context they recognised the fact that some jobs in the bank need to have a human focus and could not
be done by machines and gave examples of these; they also used these types of arguments to come to
a balanced judgement.

QUESTION 13
Again, the majority of students could explain the benefits and drawbacks of training staff over recruiting
new staff and spent a lot of time discussing all of these. However, they did not develop their marks to the
next level by applying these benefits and drawbacks to the context of the business having a shortage of
staff to meet their customer needs. Where students were able to do this their answers were often
concise and focused on the relevant benefits and drawback to gain high marks.

QUESTION 14
Students struggled to access higher levels in this question as they either did not understand zero-hour
contracts or failed to apply the use of these to the context of next day delivery. When students did
understand zero-hour contracts they could apply it well, analysing the arguments of using them to have a
flexible workforce which could flex up in periods of high demand but recognizing the constraints that they
may not be available when needed. Those who reached level four used these arguments to make a
judgement as to whether zero-hour contracts would support the implementation of next day delivery.

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