Digital Technology & Marketing (AQA A Level Business): Exam Questions

Source A: MPB Group Ltd

MPB Group Limited buys and sells used cameras and video equipment. Matt Barker founded the business in Brighton in 2011. Customers can sell their old equipment to MPB, trade it in against something else, or buy used gear at a lower price than new. The company recirculates around 570 000 items a year, and says it wants to extend the life of photo and video equipment rather than see it sit unused in a drawer.

Everything is bought and sold through MPB's own website. There are no shops. The company has offices in Brighton, Brooklyn and Berlin, so it trades in the United Kingdom, the United States and Germany. Every item is inspected by a product specialist and graded for its condition, then sold with a twelve-month warranty. Prices are set by the make, model, condition and the market the item is being sold in.

Because MPB has no shops and does not advertise on television, almost all of its customers arrive through a search engine. Some of those visits are earned, when MPB's own articles, reviews and buying guides appear in the search results without being paid for. Others are bought, when MPB pays to appear above the free results and is charged every time somebody clicks.

MPB has grown quickly. Turnover rose by 15.5% in the year to 31 March 2025 and the company took on 49 more staff. Some of that growth has been funded by borrowing. Over the same year total liabilities rose by 22.7% while net assets fell by 19.7%. Matt Barker is still a director, but he no longer runs the company alone. In 2021 an outside investment company placed directors on the board, and MPB now has 16 shareholders and an independent chairman.

MPB wants to sell more in the United States and Germany. It could spend more on paid search advertising, or it could invest in its own content so that more customers find it without a payment being made for every click.

Source: information sourced from Companies House and MPB Group Ltd, 2026

Appendix A: MPB Group Ltd selected financial data

Source: Companies House

Appendix C: MPB Group Ltd selected information

• Items recirculated each year = 570 000

• Offices = Brighton, Brooklyn and Berlin

• Warranty offered on every item sold = 12 months

• Employees, 2025 = 493 (2024: 444)

• Turnover growth, 2024 to 2025 = 15.5%

Source: MPB Group Ltd

Assess whether the information in Appendix C is a good measure of how successful MPB Group Ltd's marketing has been.

Source B: Brightpath Learning Ltd

Brightpath Learning Ltd is an online tutoring company set up six years ago by two former teachers, Aisha Rahman and Tom Petridis, who are its only shareholders and directors. It employs 31 people at its office in Leeds and works with about 400 self-employed tutors.

It sells two quite different things.

Live tutoring. A student books one-to-one lessons online with a subject specialist. A lesson costs the parent £38. Brightpath pays the tutor £26 and keeps £12. This is the larger part of the business and the part parents ask for by name, but it can only grow as fast as Brightpath can recruit and check tutors, and a tutor can only teach one student at a time.

The practice platform. A subscription costs £9 a month and gives a student unlimited access to Brightpath's own question banks, marked practice papers and progress tracking. It costs almost nothing to serve one more subscriber, because the material is already written. Fewer parents ask for it, because it is harder to explain than a lesson with a teacher.

Last year Brightpath took £7.4 million: £6.5 million from tutoring and £0.9 million from subscriptions. Fixed costs, covering the office, the 31 staff, the software and the marketing, came to £1.9 million.

The business is highly seasonal. Appendix E shows lessons booked month by month: demand builds through the autumn, rises sharply after Christmas and peaks in April, then collapses once exams finish. Aisha and Tom have to pay the office and the staff through June, July and August whatever happens.

They now have to decide where to put next year's money. Appendix F sets out the two options.

Appendix D: Brightpath Learning Ltd, summary of last year

• Fixed costs for the year: £1 900 000

Source: Analyst

Appendix E: Brightpath Learning Ltd lessons booked by month

Source: Analyst

Assess whether Brightpath Learning Ltd should spend more on explaining the practice platform to parents.

Source A: Moonpig Group plc

Moonpig Group plc sells greeting cards, gifts and experience days online. It has no shops. The group owns the Moonpig brand in the UK, Greetz in the Netherlands, and Buyagift and Red Letter Days, which sell experience days such as spa breaks and driving days. It is a public limited company listed in London.

The business runs on knowing when a customer's friends and family have birthdays. A customer who sends one card gives Moonpig Group plc a name and a date, and the company then reminds them when that date comes round again. Around that reminder it offers a gift to send with the card, which is where much of the growth now comes from. It also sells a paid membership called Plus, and during the year it launched tools that use artificial intelligence to help customers write and design cards.

In the year to 30 April 2025 revenue was £350.1 million, 2.6% up on the year before. That figure hides three very different businesses. The Moonpig brand grew 8.6%, and its revenue in the United States, Australia and Ireland grew 36.1% between them. Greetz fell 4.7%. The Experiences business was difficult enough that the group wrote £56.7 million off the value of it.

Underneath, the numbers the company watches most closely moved the right way. Active customers across Moonpig and Greetz reached 12.0 million, up from 11.5 million. Total orders grew 4.1% and the average order value grew 2.1%.

Profit depends entirely on which figure is read. Adjusted profit before tax, which leaves out the write-off, was £67.5 million against £58.2 million, a rise of 16.0%. Reported profit before tax, which includes it, was £3.0 million against £46.4 million, a fall of 93.6%. Free cash flow was £66.1 million, and the company bought back £25 million of its own shares during the second half.

Source: information sourced from Moonpig Group plc results announcement for the year ended 30 April 2025

Appendix C: Moonpig Group plc marketing channels, analyst estimates

Source: Analyst

Assess whether Moonpig Group plc should spend more on its email and app reminders.

Calculate the return on marketing spend for email and app reminders to support your answer.

Give your answer to one decimal place.

Source A: Loomfield Home Ltd

Loomfield Home Ltd sells bedding, towels and throws online. It has no shops. It is a private limited company founded by Esi Boateng, it employs 23 people and it works from a warehouse in Bristol.

Everything it sells is made from organic or recycled cotton, and that is what the business is built on. Its packaging carries the words "carbon neutral", which the company can say because it buys offsets to match the emissions of its deliveries, rather than because those deliveries produce no emissions. Nothing about the claim is untrue, and Esi Boateng has begun to wonder how long it will be before a customer asks her to explain the difference.

The website does something else she is less comfortable with. When a product is running low the page shows how many are left, and the number is real. What is not obvious to a customer is that the message appears whenever inventory falls below twenty, which for most lines is most of the time.

Last year Loomfield Home Ltd took £6.4 million, of which £5.6 million was in the United Kingdom, £0.5 million in Germany and £0.3 million in France. Both European markets are sold through the same website in the local language, with delivery from Bristol.

The company spends most of its marketing money on getting people to the website, and it has been successful at it. Since 2021 the number of visits has more than doubled. The number of orders has not.

Appendix A: Loomfield Home Ltd, four years apart

Source: Analyst

Appendix B: Loomfield Home Ltd, website visits and revenue since 2021

Source: Analyst

Assess whether Loomfield Home Ltd should spend more on attracting visitors to its website.

Using 2021 as the base year, calculate the index number for Loomfield Home Ltd's orders in 2025 to support your answer.

Give your answer to one decimal place.

Source A: Rowan & Pine Ltd

Rowan & Pine Ltd makes wooden toys in a workshop near Totnes: stacking rings, shape sorters, pull-along animals and a train set that has been in the range since 1998. It is a private limited company owned by Marta Lindqvist and employs 46 people.

It sells in two ways. A little under half its revenue comes from its own website, and the rest from independent toy shops and two department store chains. Last year revenue was £5.4 million, of which £3.60 million was in the United Kingdom, £0.90 million in Germany, £0.60 million in the United States and £0.30 million elsewhere.

The website has been the focus of the last three years and the traffic shows it. Visits rose from 1 040 000 to 1 420 000. Orders rose from 31 200 to 38 900. Marta Lindqvist has noticed that the second number has not kept up with the first and has not yet decided what to do about it.

There is something else she has not decided what to do about. Every box in the range carries the line "supports early problem-solving and fine motor development". It comes from a study of 34 children carried out six years ago by a university department, which Rowan & Pine Ltd part-funded. Nobody has repeated it. The claim has never been challenged, and it appears on packaging in three countries.

Marta Lindqvist has £200 000 to put behind one overseas market. Germany is the larger of the two and sells almost entirely through toy shops. The United States is smaller, growing faster, and sells almost entirely through the website.

Appendix A: Rowan & Pine Ltd, website and orders

Source: Analyst

Assess whether Rowan & Pine Ltd should spend more on bringing visitors to its website.

Calculate the percentage change in Rowan & Pine Ltd's website orders between 2024 and 2025 to support your answer.

Give your answer to two decimal places.

Source B: Brightpath Learning Ltd

Brightpath Learning Ltd is an online tutoring company set up six years ago by two former teachers, Aisha Rahman and Tom Petridis, who are its only shareholders and directors. It employs 31 people at its office in Leeds and works with about 400 self-employed tutors.

It sells two quite different things.

Live tutoring. A student books one-to-one lessons online with a subject specialist. A lesson costs the parent £38. Brightpath pays the tutor £26 and keeps £12. This is the larger part of the business and the part parents ask for by name, but it can only grow as fast as Brightpath can recruit and check tutors, and a tutor can only teach one student at a time.

The practice platform. A subscription costs £9 a month and gives a student unlimited access to Brightpath's own question banks, marked practice papers and progress tracking. It costs almost nothing to serve one more subscriber, because the material is already written. Fewer parents ask for it, because it is harder to explain than a lesson with a teacher.

Last year Brightpath took £7.4 million: £6.5 million from tutoring and £0.9 million from subscriptions. Fixed costs, covering the office, the 31 staff, the software and the marketing, came to £1.9 million.

The business is highly seasonal. Appendix E shows lessons booked month by month: demand builds through the autumn, rises sharply after Christmas and peaks in April, then collapses once exams finish. Aisha and Tom have to pay the office and the staff through June, July and August whatever happens.

They now have to decide where to put next year's money. Appendix F sets out the two options.

Appendix D: Brightpath Learning Ltd, summary of last year

• Fixed costs for the year: £1 900 000

Source: Analyst

Appendix E: Brightpath Learning Ltd lessons booked by month

Source: Analyst

Appendix F: Data for two ways of investing £600 000

Source: Analyst

Appendix F shows two ways in which Brightpath Learning Ltd could invest £600,000.

Evaluate both options and recommend which one would be the better use of Brightpath Learning Ltd's £600,000.

Source A: Moonpig Group plc

Moonpig Group plc sells greeting cards, gifts and experience days online. It has no shops. The group owns the Moonpig brand in the UK, Greetz in the Netherlands, and Buyagift and Red Letter Days, which sell experience days such as spa breaks and driving days. It is a public limited company listed in London.

The business runs on knowing when a customer's friends and family have birthdays. A customer who sends one card gives Moonpig Group plc a name and a date, and the company then reminds them when that date comes round again. Around that reminder it offers a gift to send with the card, which is where much of the growth now comes from. It also sells a paid membership called Plus, and during the year it launched tools that use artificial intelligence to help customers write and design cards.

In the year to 30 April 2025 revenue was £350.1 million, 2.6% up on the year before. That figure hides three very different businesses. The Moonpig brand grew 8.6%, and its revenue in the United States, Australia and Ireland grew 36.1% between them. Greetz fell 4.7%. The Experiences business was difficult enough that the group wrote £56.7 million off the value of it.

Underneath, the numbers the company watches most closely moved the right way. Active customers across Moonpig and Greetz reached 12.0 million, up from 11.5 million. Total orders grew 4.1% and the average order value grew 2.1%.

Profit depends entirely on which figure is read. Adjusted profit before tax, which leaves out the write-off, was £67.5 million against £58.2 million, a rise of 16.0%. Reported profit before tax, which includes it, was £3.0 million against £46.4 million, a fall of 93.6%. Free cash flow was £66.1 million, and the company bought back £25 million of its own shares during the second half.

Source: information sourced from Moonpig Group plc results announcement for the year ended 30 April 2025

Appendix A: Moonpig Group plc selected results

Source: Moonpig Group plc

Appendix B: Moonpig Group plc, three measures

Source: Moonpig Group plc

Appendix C: Moonpig Group plc marketing channels, analyst estimates

Source: Analyst

Appendix C shows what Moonpig Group plc spends on each of its marketing channels and the revenue attributed to each one.

Evaluate whether Moonpig Group plc should move its television spending into email and app reminders or keep its spending as it is.

Source A: Nine Acres Kitchen Ltd

Nine Acres Kitchen Ltd delivers meal kits: a box of measured ingredients and a recipe card for each meal. It is a private limited company founded by Dan Ferreira and Aisha Nkemelu, it employs 210 people across a packing site in Northamptonshire and an office in Manchester, and it has 12 600 active subscribers.

A subscriber chooses their meals on an app each week. The standard box costs £48.99 and the average subscriber takes two a month, which gives revenue of £14.8 million a year. Ingredients, packing and delivery cost £31.20 a box.

Getting people to try it is not the problem. The first box costs £14.99, and the offer works: the company recruits about 1 400 new subscribers a month. Keeping them is a different matter. Appendix B shows what happens to every hundred people who join. By the fourth box, the third charged at the full £48.99, 41 of them have gone.

The company knows a great deal about all of this. The app records what each subscriber cooks, what they skip, when they pause and what they were looking at before they cancelled. Dan Ferreira wants to use it to work out who is about to leave so the company can offer them something. Aisha Nkemelu wants to use it to suggest what they might cook next, on the grounds that people who enjoy the food do not cancel.

There is a third thing neither of them has raised at a board meeting. Starting a subscription takes about two minutes on the app. Cancelling one requires a telephone call, on weekdays between nine and five.

Appendix A: Nine Acres Kitchen Ltd, last year

Source: Analyst

Appendix B: Nine Acres Kitchen Ltd, what happens to every 100 subscribers who join

Source: Analyst

Appendix C: Data for two ways of spending £300 000

Source: Analyst

Appendix C shows two ways in which Nine Acres Kitchen Ltd could spend £300,000 on what it knows about its subscribers.

Evaluate whether Nine Acres Kitchen Ltd should spend it on predicting who is about to leave or on suggesting what they might cook next.