Entrepreneurship Event Aspects - Coursework Example

Entrepreneurship Report Introduction Social capital is an important component of entrepreneurship and therefore entrepreneurs not only engage in businesses for monetary gains, but also give back to the society (Kutzhanova & University of Louisville, 2007). We as Movember foundation have value for this fact and we have taken it to be our basic operations principle. Movember is an Australia based charitable organization that that has concern for all humanity across the globe. The foundation therefore conducts and implements annual events across the globe meant to create awareness on issues concerning men’s health. In particular, the organization focus on prostate cancer, to achieve its objective the organization raises funds for other regional charitable organizations that form part of its beneficiaries. According to Movember’s website, the organization raised £ 48.5 million during the 2011 campaign; this is a massive increase considering that the organization had raised £ 20.9 during the 2010 global campaigns. These funds will be channelled through associate charitable organization to create awareness about prostate cancer and change men’s attitude towards their health. The organization conducts its operation across various countries around the globe including Australia, New Zealand, USA, Ireland Canada and the UK. Movember is affiliated to other social welfare organizations such as the Prostrate Cancer Charity organization in the United Kingdom. For the organization to conduct its activities successfully it need to be concerned with the sustainability of its activities. To enhance sustainability the organization has to be concerned with entrepreneurship (Hirshleifer, Glazer & Hirshleifer, 2005). In relation to this issue entrepreneurship course students designed charity campaigns for the organization aimed at creating the entrepreneurial awareness in the organization. This paper therefore presents a report about Movember charity campaigns that were designed and implemented by entrepreneurship students. Event Planning and Promotion Activities of our charity organization focused their attention in the UK and therefore we had to be concerned about its popularity and the number of participants. In order to conduct successful campaigns we had to have an online registration of team members and to acquire items required during the fundraising event. Fundraising was set as the main objective of our charity organization and therefore our activities had to be biased towards fundraising. Although raising funds was the main objective of the event, our activities focused on charity and giving back to the community. Fundraising was therefore conducted with the aim of creating awareness on the effects of prostate cancer. In order to succeed in the set goals we required custom made T-shirts and flyers, we made T-shirts with conspicuous statements on awareness and flyers that contained facts about health. Although our activities had to include selling of products, we focused more on creating social awareness and collection of donations. In that endeavour, we spent £ 41.52 million on assets that had no profit generation intentions and this contributed to creation of awareness as our main objective. Being entrepreneurship students our aim was to link charity activities and entrepreneurship with the objective of demonstrating the relationship between the two. We therefore conducted our activities based on entrepreneurship principles. In the process, we had to apply the 4 p of marketing to achieve optimal outcome. The 4 P’s of marketing are a combination of basic and important marketing variables that include price, product, place and promotion. The product is the item provided by the supplier to meet the needs of the customer or provides a solution to a problem while the price is the cost incurred by the customer in obtaining the item or solution. On the other hand, promotion includes the persuasive information given by the producer to create awareness about the product (Smither, & Richard, 2005). Finally place are the activities and efforts taken by the suppliers to create convenience for the customers when obtaining a particular product. Equipped with this knowledge we designed our products to cater for a wide range of audience by considering the prospective customers age, location and income. This consideration enabled us to come up with appropriate products according to the customer’s needs. For us to achieve our objectives on planned activities we had to create the need of our products among potential customers (Smither, & Richard, 2005). This part of our activity required application of promotion as the second p of entrepreneurship. To achieve this objective we used the already designed fliers and emails to contact potential customers. We also realized that the target group for our activities were the youths and therefore we had to use Facebook for convenience. Promotion of our products and activities also contributed to our main objective through creation of awareness. Thirdly, we had to consider the price for our products to ensure that it was competitive and appropriate for the target group. To come up with the most appropriate price we required two categories of products with two different marked prices. The two categories of products were designed in order to create the most appropriate price for our products by making it moderate and sufficient to cover the production cost. Finally, we had to select a convenient location from where we could establish our target market. This was the basic strategy and plan for the planned charitable events although we had to create a more refined strategy with all our activities. We held our first group meeting on 11th October immediately after our classes; during this meeting, we discussed important issues concerning the charity and the needed support. The next meeting was scheduled for 18th October, in this meeting we spent about one hour assigning tasks and discussing the time schedule for the planned event. After the 18th October meeting we held a brief meeting the following day to conduct a follow-up on duties assigned to each group member. We conducted this follow-up through conducting a rehearsal on duties assigned to each member for duration of fifteen minutes. We held our last official meeting as a group on 25th October to do the final touches on the planned activities. On this meeting, we did final adjustments on the set time schedule to come up with the most appropriate time for purchase of merchandise, hand-outs, and T-shirts required in promoting the event. Finally, the most anticipated day of October 31st arrived and on this day, we had to start our activities as we had planned in our meetings. The charity event was scheduled to begin at 10 am although we had to extend the time to 1 pm to cater for any unplanned occurrences and inconveniences. With the modern development in technology, networking has become a basic need. This has resulted from improved communication. As stated by Arnord (1997), networking involves the establishment and maintaining contacts with other people aimed at enhancing relationship. Networks established and accumulated over time can be valuable resource in marketing. As entrepreneurship students, we were concerned with this fact and therefore we needed to make use of the resource. Although we conducted the charity event and awareness physically, we were concerned with contributions from already established networks. We therefore had to run parallel programs on the social-media to substitute our main field activities. With all these activities to conduct, we had to consider the available resource such as time and finances. In our allocation of available resources, we encountered constraints that we needed consider to determine the most appropriate pattern of resource allocation (Kerr, 2000). To begin with, time was the main constraint that we needed to consider by determine how to allocate the available time on the planned activities. We utilized the beginning of lectures and breaks to attract student’s attention and to sell to them our idea. Although that time was appropriate for our activities it was insufficient considering the degree of awareness we had to create. The second constraint that we needed to consider for our product was the price; this required that we set an attractive price for the customer at the same time cover our production cost. Initially we had set the minimum price for our merchandise at 1.5 pounds. After the initial offer during the morning session, we realized that the customers most of whom were students were not comfortable with our price and therefore we had to make some adjustment during the afternoon session. We therefore settled for 1 pound as the minimum price for our merchandise, this was to ensure that we sold as much as we could for the remaining period. This activity was successful since we sold most of the remaining merchandise with minimal effort. As stated by Hirshleifer, & Glazer (2005) the price of a commodity is the most important factor considered by customers when making purchases. This implies that price was the most appropriate tool that we needed to use in influencing our customers towards purchasing our products. Although this measure was the most appropriate, the move affected our cover for the cost of production. However, considering that our efforts were designed for charity we had to absorb the extra cost due to the community issues that we needed to tackle. Organizational and Community Issues From its missions and objectives, Movember is concerned with men’s health however this does not prevent the organization from taking care of women’s issues. Due to this factor, wehad many difficulties in drawing attention from the women and therefore we needed to put extra efforts. For our efforts to cover the entire society, we had to include the women and this required us to employ extra measures to attract them. In response to this, we designed special flyers that had a message targeting women; in particular, the message informed women that, men affected by prostate cancer could be their husbands, fathers, or siblings. The message was meant to inform them that they had to be concerned with the issues as much as their men are concerned. Implementations and outcomes Following a successful implementation of our plans and objectives as Movember organization, we succeeded in creating the necessary awareness. We also noticed people preferred purchasing real items than making donations and therefore we capitalized on making sales. Buying commodities instead of making donations is part of consumer behavior on exchange of value between buyers and traders (Lantos, 2010). Our online donation records given below best demonstrate this factor and serves as a proof for our proceedings. From the online proceedings records it was obvious that people preferred buying commodities on offer in order to support our movements to making of donations. Due to this preference, our organization concentrated on offering tangible items to the customers, making us realize a total income of £ 97.62 million at the end of the event. This figure was realized after we had spent a total of £ 70.70 as miscellaneous expenditure. At the end of the activity, we realized a net profit of £26.92 that we added on to the organization kitty. Net profit is equivalent to output less input and expenses, the amount obtained as net profit was realized after all the costs had been taken off and therefore it could be utilized for any appropriate purpose. We therefore had to ensure that our total expenditure was below our income to realize the profit needed to finance our activities. Although we were successful in most of our activities, future projects can be more successful if the following recommendations are implemented. Expenses Quantity Total (include tax and Shipping ) Movember T-shirts (3 medium,1 XL,1 Small) 5 £34.02 Back Side printing 5 £5 Movember Magnets 20 £14.46 Item sold &Donation Box Print Cost for flyers 50 £2.5 Total Expenses £70.70 Net Profit end of the event £26.92 Recommendations With the modern improvements in technology then social media is becoming an appropriate tool for business and therefore future activities should capitalize on the resource. This will be achieved through effective and efficient use of the social media. Secondly, we need to have a more detailed business and methods of doing business; this requires us to restructure our business plan to include other important business factors. Having a detailed business also requires us to have a variety of products and innovative methods of creating sales. Market research is an important part of creating a business strategy and therefore future activities need to be based effectively on market research. Finally, we need to broaden our market and this requires us to have a wider geographical area of coverage. In relation to this future charity, activities should consider involving women by conducting adequate promotions. References Arnord, J., 1997. Managing Careers in the 21st Century. London: SAGE Hirshleifer, J. Glazer, A. & Hirshleifer, D. 2005. Price theory and applications: Decisions, markets, and information. London: Cambridge University Press. Kerr, S., 2004. Introduction: Preparing people to lead. Academy of Management Executive. 18(2), 118-120. Kutzhanova, J. & University of Louisville,. 2007. Entrepreneurial Skill Development And How Best To Assist Entrepreneurs: Policy Implication For Enterprise Development Practice. Ann Arbor: ProQuest. Lantos, G. 2010., Consumer Behaviour in Action: Real-Life Application for Marketing Mangers. New York: M. E. Sharpe. Smither, J., & Richard, R., 2005. Does performance improve following multisource feedback Personnel? Psychology. 58, 33-66 Read More