1.4 Business aims and objectives

Business objectives may include

• Survival – Being able to continue for a long period of time, rather than only making a profit in the short term.
• Profit – Maximising profits.
• Growth – Increasing sales, profit or market share.
• Providing a service – Owners may want the satisfaction of providing a good service to customers. This may help more customers to return in the future.
• Market share – The amount of the market controlled by a company.

Objectives help to make sure that

• All employees are working towards a common goal, this can be motivational
• Objectives can help measure the success of the business. They can check if they met their objectives for that year.
• Helps employees to be given clear and relevant targets so they can be more productive

How and why objectives might change as a business evolves

As a business grows it's objectives may change. This can be for a number of reasons:

• They are at different stages of their development.
• The owners have different motivations.

📝_EXAMPLE_

A brand new shop in your home town may have different objectives to a multinational business with stores around the world.

• Hometown store: objective = to survive
• Multinational business: objective = to maximise profits and achieve global domination