Copyright 2002 TecEd

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Exam Guide
The Grid
E Criteria

“recognise and describe the characterisitics of the market within which the businesses operate”

Explanation

Given a business and information about it, can you describe the market it’s in, talking about, for example:

1. the amount of competition
2. whether it’s a local, national or international (global) market
3. the amount of government legislation/regulations

Assistance

This is a vague criteria, but quite an important one. What you are being asked to describe is the nature of the market eg  are there many firms in the market giving fierce competition? Practice here means looking at a real world business (for example Sony) and imagining what it would be like to run a business like this: would it be easy or would it be difficult?

To describe the characterisitcs of a market means that you have to provide features of it. Exactly what you say depends on the information you’re given and the question being asked. In reality this criteria will probably be covered through a question which asks you to describe the amount of competition or other items from the list above.

Success here means you’ve understood the factors which affect the ability of a business to set a price ie the degree to which the business has monopolistic price setting powers. This criteria is very closely linked to criteria E3.