past year paper on december 2013

It is quite difficult in this question to apply PEST because the question does not tell you much.

There is obviously something on P/E:

“Beeland which is a developing country where incomes have risen to the point where demand is increasing for Lopten’s goods among the growing middle-class population.

“The government of Beeland has supported this new entrant with grants”

Increasing affluence usually means the social landscape is changing eg it is becoming normal to own new technology

Hard to see anything directly on T, but the existing machines are cheap and cheerful and the new ones might make use of better technology to give the product more sophistication of efficiency. However, that’s going a little further than is made explicit in the question.

For example, if the economy is strengthening by 10% pa you would expect your KPI (eg sales volume) to increase by at least that. If competitors were bring out exciting (?) new machines then you need a KPI to ensure you keep up eg a target of launching 4 new models in the year.

Remember, the key to this paper is performance management. Whatever happens in the macro-environment, competitive environment or marketing environment we need to consider a appropriate response to keep achieving acceptable results. KPIs both set targets (thus letting people know what’s expected of them) and provide controls (ie, have the targets been achieved, and if not, why not?